Rourkela (Orissa), Oct 08: The BJP appears to have stolen a march over the Congress ahead of the October 30 byelection to Talsara (ST) Assembly constituency in Sundargarh
district by first naming its candidate for the contest.
BJP state chief Jual Oram said Sahadeb Khakha will be the party's candidate and file his nomination papers tomorrow.
The bypoll is likely to witness a straight fight between the Congress and the BJP.
Notification for the byelection was issued on Friday last with the last date for filing nomination papers being October 13. The documents would be scrutinised the next day.
The last date for withdrawal of candidature is October 16. Counting of votes would be taken up on November 2.
The seat had fallen vacant after the sitting Congress member and former minister Gajadhar Majhi passed away recently following illness.
Majhi, who had won the Talsara seat five times in 1980, 1985, 1995, 2000 and 2004, was a popular Congress leader in the constituency. But he had to fight hard to defeat BJP's Baikunthanath Kalo by a narrow margin of 959 votes in a four- cornered contest in the last election.
Khakha had been the front-runner for the BJP ticket last time but had to bow out of the race after it was found that a criminal case was pending against him. But this time he did
not face any such problem as the case had been disposed off.
PCC president Jayadev Jena said that the party would finalise its candidate within a day or two.
Altogether nine Congress aspirants had applied for party ticket which had been forwarded to the PCC, district Congress president Raj Kishore Sarangi said.
Bureau Report
