BJP and Congress candidates on their way to file nominations for the Cuttack Municipal Corporation polls on Thursday. Picture by Badrika Nath Das

Cuttack, Jan. 16: Pyari Mohan Mohapatra’s Odisha Jan Morcha (OJM) will use its kite symbol in the forthcoming municipal corporation polls. The party will field candidates in at least sixty per cent of the 59 wards.

The state election commission had disallowed the newly floated party to use its kite symbol in the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation polls. The OJM had sought judicial intervention against it, but later decided not to field candidates in Bhubaneswar after Orissa High Court rejected its petition to use the kite symbol.

“The poll panel has allowed us to use our symbol in the Cuttack civic polls,” OJM vice-president Rajendra Prasad Singh said.

The OJM had completed its groundwork for selection of candidates. A total of 168 applications were received from aspiring candidates.

“A list of candidates for 40 wards was recommended to the party president today, for final decision,” Singh said. Filing of nominations by party candidates has been planned from tomorrow, he added.

The party released the names of its candidates for 20 wards today.

OJM president Pyari Mohan Mohapatra had kicked off his party’s campaign on Tuesday, by flying a kite here.

Cuttack municipal elections would be the first test for OJM in electoral politics. The party had stayed away from the first and second phase of urban local bodies in coastal and western Odisha because it was yet to get its symbol from the Election Commission.

Ama Odisha, another new political party, has decided to be in the fray for the civic polls even though it is yet to get its poll symbol.

The fledgling party, which primarily banks on disgruntled Congress workers, plans to field persons from at least 50 per cent of the 59 wards to contest as Independent candidates.

“We have selected candidates for 30 wards. They will file their nominations tomorrow,” Ama Odisha co-ordinator Md Shakeel said.

“As part of our campaign, booth-level meetings have been organised over the past month. We have already covered over 50 per cent of the 422 booths listed for the Cuttack Municipal Corporation polls,” he said.

The CPI(M) has decided to contest from three wards. The three party candidates — Gopala Rout, Chandrakanta Behera and Subhra Mohapatra — filed their nomination papers yesterday from ward Nos. 40, 41 and 46 respectively.

The BJP has declared the names of its candidates for nine more wards. On Tuesday night, the party had declared a list of candidates for 40 of the 59 wards.

The Congress, which released a list of candidates for 40 wards on Sunday night, is expected to declare the names of candidates for the remaining 19 wards tomorrow.

Nominations filed

Thirty-two candidates of various parties filed their nomination papers today. Hemanta Behera, one of the two re-nominated sitting Congress councillors, filed his nomination from ward No. 16.

“I will try to live up to the expectations of my party, which has re-imposed its confidence in me, and also the people of my new ward,” Behera said. The Congress has fielded him from a new ward because his seat (ward No. 11) has now been reserved for women.

Anita Naik, who filed her papers for the Congress from ward No. 22, said: “If I am elected, I will work to sort of the waterlogging problem in the area.”