Bhubaneswar, May 2 (IANS): The ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) on Thursday released its last list of three candidates for the Assembly elections.

With this list, the BJD has declared candidates for all 147 Assembly constituencies for the upcoming state elections.

The party in a surprise move also changed its candidate for the Deogarh Assembly seat.

BJD president and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik announced that Romanch Ranjan Biswal will be the party’s nominee for the Deogarh Assembly seat in place of Arundhati Kumari Devi who was earlier named as the party’s candidate on April 17.

Biswal had fought the previous Assembly elections from the Deogarh constituency but lost to Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Subash Chandra Panigrahi by around 7,000 votes.

Arundhati Devi’s husband Nitesh Gang Dev is the senior BJP leader and the sitting MP of the Sambalpur Lok Sabha seat. He is related to the royal family of Bamra in Sambalpur district.

Recently, several reports about Gang Deb’s resignation from the BJP came up in the local media based on a post on the BJP leader’s Facebook account. However, he later denied resigning from the BJP and clarified that his Facebook account had been hacked.

Apart from the Deogarh seat, the ruling party declared Sandhya Rani Das as the candidate for the Korei Assembly seat in Jajpur district replacing the sitting MLA Ashok Kumar Bal. Sandhya Rani, the wife of former Janata Dal strongman Ashok Das, is the mother of BJD heavyweight and party candidate for Sambalpur Lok Sabha seat, Pranab Prakash Das.

Sitting MLA Sukanta Kumar Nayak was renominated from the Nilgiri Assembly constituency of Balasore district. The ruling party fielded Sabitri Pradhan in the Khandapada Assembly seat in place of expelled leader and businessman Soumya Ranjan Patnaik.

Notably, Assembly and Lok Sabha elections will be held simultaneously in Odisha in four phases from May 13 to June 1. The results for both Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha will be out on June 4.