Surat Repeats In Puri? Congress Candidate Returns Ticket; Fight Between Sambit Patra And Ex-IPS Officer Now

Congress candidate from Puri, Odisha, Sucharita Mohanty returns her ticket citing inadequate financial support from the party to contest the Lok Sabha elections. Puri is scheduled to vote on May 25 in the sixth phase.

Sucharita was seeking donations to campaign and contest for the Lok Sabha polls. This was the first time a Congress candidate sought donations using a QR code. Sambit Patra is the BJP's candidate from this constituency. He lost to BJD's Pinaki Mishra in the 2019 elections.

Before Puri, Congress candidates have withdrawn their names or their candidacy has been rejected in two other constituencies. Resultantly, Congress doesn't have a candidate in Surat and Indore, and now it's Puri where the party has no representative.

Does it make a strong chance for Sambit Patra to win Puri for the BJP? Maybe! But Patra suffered a terrible loss in the 2019 elections at the hands of BJD's Pinaki Mishra last time.

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Pinaki Mishra has won this seat four times. For the first time in 1996 as a Congress candidate and consecutively thrice from 2009 to 2019 as a BJD candidate. Notably, BJD hasn't fielded him this time but Arup Patnaik, a former IPS officer for the reasons best known to the party. He was earlier fielded by Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik from Bhubaneshwar in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections only to lose it to the BJP candidate Aparajita Sarangi who is an ex-IAS officer.