ROURKELA: With just a day to go before the nominations close for the three-tier panchayat polls, some unpleasant events surfaced in Sundargarh district on Wednesday.Suspended Bonai BJP MLA Bhimsen Choudhury is in the course of queering the pitch for his erstwhile mentor and Odisha BJP chief Jual Oram in the latter’s home-turf _ Bonai sub-division. He has fielded rebel independent candidates in seven of the eight zilla parishad (ZP) seats in Bonai Assembly segment. The rebel candidates include Choudhary’s married daughter Basanti Samanta. She filed her papers for the Gurundia (B) constituency of the ZP before Bonai sub-collector D Prasant Kumar Reddy on Tuesday. Seven independents with their supporters arrived in a procession to file their nominations. While Choudhury’s election manager and former BJP president of Bonai unit Sundarmani Pradhan is confident of winning from at least four seats, Choudhury, however, distanced himself from the activities of Independents.Pradhan even went on to say they had applied for common symbol of TV for all candidates, adding that the Koida (A) constituency was left out amidst Maoist fear. Choudhury has been suspended from the party last year on charges of horse-trading during the June 2010 Rajya Sabha elections. Pradhan too is under suspension. Meanwhile, given the conflicting scenarios, Jual led eight candidates on Wednesday to file nominations at the Bonai sub-collector’s office. Jual appeared firm on suspension of Choudhury, adding that he, with clandestine support of BJD, was out to damage the Saffron party. He said the rebel candidates would not have much impact and BJP would come out with flying colours in the 35-member Sundargarh ZP election.
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