Bhubaneswar: BJD president and chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday met observers of various Lok Sabha seats at his residence here amid hectic parleying for party tickets for the first phase of elections on April 11.Many senior party leaders including Niranjan Pujari (Kalahandi), Pranab Prakash Das (Koraput), Maheswar Mohanty (Berhampur) and Surya Narayan Patro (Balangir) submitted their reports and briefed Naveen regarding the party’s organizational strength, BJD sources said.Names of potential candidates for the four Lok Sabha seats and 28 assembly segments under them were discussed in the meeting. The decision on finalising the tickets were left to the BJD president. “We have submitted our reports to the party president and he will take a final call,” Maheswar said.Sources said the party has almost zeroed in on the names of potential candidates for the four Lok Sabha seats while the exercise is still on in some assembly segments.Former Union minister Chandra Sekhar Sahu, who switched to BJD last year, and Paralakhemundi royal scion Kalyani Devi are front-runners for the Berhampur Lok Sabha seat. Kaushalya, wife of Koraput MP Jhina Hikaka, may replace her husband in Koraput. Names of multiple leaders are doing the rounds for Kalahandi and Nabarangpur parliamentary constituencies.“We submitted our reports and briefed the chief minister. The chief minister reviewed the party’s position on a case to case basis,” Patra said.Meanwhile, many senior leaders of the party including former minister Rabi Nanda, Berhampur legislator Ramesh Chandra Chyau Patnaik, Bargarh MP Prabhas Kumar Singh and Nayagarh MLA Arun Sahoo met the chief minister at his residence to show their interests to contest the election again.“Most of the issues pertaining to Berhampur have been resolved. The commissioning of the Janibili drinking water project has been done at a cost of Rs 490 crore. I am in constant touch with my constituents and hopeful that the party president will repose his faith on me again,” Chyau Patnaik said.

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