BJP Chief JP Nadda to address Berhampur public meeting on Sunday

Bhubaneswar: With campaigning for upcoming elections in Odisha gathering momentum, BJP national president JP Nadda will be visiting the state on April 28.

“The BJP chief will address a public meeting in Berhampur and later attend party leaders’ meeting in Nabarangpur,” former Odisha BJP president Samir Mohanty told the media.

The announcement came within few hours of Union Minister Amit Shah leaving the state after attending an election rally in Sonepur from where he sounded the poll bugle for BJP. He also held crucial meeting with state leaders of 13 parliamentary constituencies here.

Berhampur and Nabarangpur are among the four Lok Sabha seats which will go to polls in the first round elections in the state on May 13. The other two seats are Kalahandi and Koraput. The state will also vote for 28 Assembly seats under these constituencies.

The Berhampur LS seat is set to witness an interesting battle between two defectors. While the BJP has fielded Gopalpur MLA Pradeep Panigrahi, an expelled BJD leader who joined the saffron camp in February, BJD’s candidate Bhrugu Baxipatra, who was the vice president of state BJP, got the ticket within a few hours of switching sides.

Balabhadra Majhi is the BJP nominee from Nabarangpur and he is pitted against BJD’s Pradeep Kumar Majhi, who had won the Lok Sabha from Nabarangpur in 2009 on Congress ticket. Balabhadra had won the seat in 2014 by defeating Pradeep.

Notably, Shah and Nadda featured in the list of 40 BJP star campaigners for simultaneous polls in Odisha. The others on the list are Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia and Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

UP CM Yogi Adityanath, Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sharma and Odia actors Anubhav Mohanty, Sritam Das, Harihar Mohapatra and Pinky Pradhan also found a place on the list.