Chief minister and Biju Janata Dal chief Naveen Patnaik on Friday announced that his party will support BJP candidate and former bureaucrat Ashwini Vaishnaw for one of the vacant Rajya Sabha seats from Odisha signalling the growing bonhomie between the two erstwhile allies.
By-election to three Rajya Sabha seats in Odisha has been necessitated by resignation of Achyuta Samanta, Soumya Ranjan Patnaik and Pratap Keshari Deb.
Though Patnaik’s announcement of party’s IT cell chief and former principal accountant general Amar Patnaik and party spokesman Sasmit Patra for two seats was on expected lines, the third candidate Ashwini Vaishnaw was a surprise.
Vaishnaw, a 1994-batch Odisha cadre IAS officer, now working in private sector after resigning from government, was once private secretary to former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Patnaik initially announced that Vaishnaw will be BJD candidate for the third seat without realising that BJP had announced the former bureaucrat as its candidate half an hour ago.The chief minister later clarified that Vaishnaw was BJP candidate and BJD would support him. He said PM Modi and union home minister Amit Shah had a discussion with him and requested him to support Vaishnaw.