Senior BJP leader and Sundergarh MP Jual Oram on Tuesday said the party’s central election committee has finalised former Union Minister Dilip Ray as its nominee from the Rourkela assembly segment in Odisha.
Oram’s comment comes a day after the Delhi High Court stayed the conviction of Ray in a case about irregularities in the allocation of a coal block in Jharkhand in 1999, allowing him to contest the elections in May in Odisha.
The Lok Sabha and the assembly elections in Odisha will be held simultaneously. The central election committee has already finalised the candidature of Dilip Ray from the Rourkela assembly segment. As the court has given relief to Ray, the party will announce his nomination very soon, Oram told reporters while campaigning at Subdega under the Sunderhargh Lok Sabha segment.
Oram, who is seeking re-election from the Sunderhargh parliamentary seat said Ray will arrive in Rourkela on Wednesday and launch the campaign. He also said that Ray is an influential leader in Sundergarh and his participation in the polls will boost the BJP’s electoral prospects in the entire area.
In 2020, Ray was convicted in a coal block allocation case, pertaining to his tenure as the union minister of state for coal in 1999. Ray, a three-time MLA, has popularity among the voters in Sundergarh, a local BJP leader said. He had last won the Rourkela seat in 2014 by a margin of 10,929 votes. This time, the BJD has re-nominated Sarada Prasad Nayak, who is also the state’s labour minister.
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