Bhubaneswar, May 27: The Election Commission (EC) on Wednesday announced by-elections to one Rajya Sabha seat in Odisha.
The by-election was necessitated after senior leader Debashish Samantaray resigned from the Rajya Sabha on May 25 as an BJD MP.
As per the schedule, the nominations for the polls would be filed from June 1 to June 8. The polling would take place in the respective state assemblies from 9 AM to 4 PM on June 18, and counting of votes would start from 5 PM.
Notably, a day after stepping down as a Rajya Sabha MP and quitting the Biju Janata Dal, Samantaray joined the the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in New Delhi on Tuesday. He was welcomed by BJP national president Nitin Nabin, Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Majhi and Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Union Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram.
Samantaray, a three-time MLA, is expected to return to the Rajya Sabha with the BJP support, following a precedent set by current BJP MP Sujeet Kumar and former MP Mamata Mohanta, both of whom had resigned from the Upper House following their resignation from BJD and were later re-elected with support of the safforn party.
With Samantaray’s exit, the Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal’s strength in the Rajya Sabha has come down to five - Sulata Deo, Subhasish Khuntia, Manas Ranjan Mangaraj, Santrupt Misra, and Sasmit Patra - while the party currently has no representation in the Lok Sabha.
The by-election will be held along with the elections to 24 Rajya Sabha seats across 10 States on June 18, as well as by-elections to one seat each in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.
