Bhubaneswar/New Delhi, June 25: Debashish Samantaray, who was recently elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Odisha as a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate, took oath as a member of the Upper House of Parliament on Thursday.
Rajya Sabha Chairman C.P. Radhakrishnan administered the oath to Samantaray along with nine other newly elected members in the Rajya Sabha chamber in New Delhi.
The newly inducted members included four representatives from Andhra Pradesh, two from Jharkhand, and one each from Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu. Among them, five members took the oath in Hindi, three in Telugu, one in Tamil, and one in English.
Those sworn in were Sana Sathish Babu (TDP), Vijay Chintakayala (TDP), Bhashyam Rama Krishna (TDP), and Lingamaneni Ramesh (JSP) from Andhra Pradesh; Tai Tagak (BJP) from Arunachal Pradesh; Rajesh Parmanand Shukla (BJP) from Gujarat; Parimal Nathwani (Independent) and Baidyanath Ram (JMM) from Jharkhand; Debashish Samantaray (BJP) from Odisha; and Praveen Chakravarty (Congress) from Tamil Nadu.
Samantaray, once considered a close aide and loyalist of Biju Janata Dal (BJD) president and former Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, resigned from the party’s primary membership and vacated his Rajya Sabha seat on May 24. Subsequently, he joined the BJP and was nominated by the party for the Rajya Sabha by-election from Odisha.
He was elected unopposed to the Upper House on June 18, marking a significant political shift from the regional BJD to the ruling BJP.
