All of Odisha’s ministers resigned, allowing Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to reshuffle his cabinet on Saturday. According to media sources, the new ministers will be sworn in at 12 p.m. on Sunday. This comes a day after Odisha’s governing Biju Janata Dal (BJD) claimed a twin victory on Friday, winning all three Rajya Sabha seats without opposition and a by-poll to the Brajrajnagar assembly seat in Jharsuguda district by a significant margin.
Sulata Deo, Manas Ranjan Mangaraj, and Sasmit Patra are the three-party candidates elected to the Rajya Sabha. Patra has been re-nominated, while Deo and Mangaraj are newcomers to the Rajya Sabha. They were elected without opposition since neither the BJP nor the Congress could field a candidate due to a lack of members in the Assembly. The BJD has 113 members in the 147-member parliament, while the opposition BJP and Congress have 22 and nine MLAs, respectively.
On the same day, BJD candidate Alaka Mohanty won the Brajrajnagar by-election by a landslide margin of over 66,000 votes, beating her nearest opponent, Congress veteran Kishore Patel. The margin in the Brajrajnagar by-election was the largest in Odisha’s by-elections since 2019.
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