Congress candidates on their way to file nomination papers and (below) broken furniture at BJD MLA Pravat Biswal’s house after an aspiring candidate and his supporters ransacked it in Cuttack on Friday. Pictures by Badrika Nath Das

Cuttack, Jan. 17: Thirty sitting BJD councillors in the municipal corporation were dropped as the party released its first list of 48 candidates for the civic body polls.

While some of them have been denied party nominations because of their alleged involvement in the Phailin relief scam, some others became victims of the delimitation of constituencies.

Amarendra Pratap Swain, nephew of the party’s Athagarh MLA Ranendra Pratap Swain and Kaniska Jena, nephew of Mahanga BJD MLA Pratap Jena, will contest from wards 11 and 41, respectively. BJD councillors held both the wards, which were earlier reserved for women. The wards were de-reserved after delimitation.

Mayor Saumendra Ghose will not contest the elections this time.

“The screening committee has decided candidates for 48 seats. Thirty sitting councillors have been dropped due to their alleged involvement in post-Phailin relief scam and also because of the delimitation of various wards,” Choudwar Cuttack’s BJD MLA Pravat Biswal told The Telegraph.

Of the 11 wards for which candidates are yet to be finalised, 10 have BJD councillors, including Madhusudan Sahu, who was expelled from the party after the scam surfaced.

As part of the investigation ordered by chief minister Naveen Patnaik, the state vigilance searched the houses of 29 councillors suspected to be involved in the embezzlement of cyclone relief materials. Of them, 22 were from the BJD.

“For the remaining 11 wards, neither sitting councillors allegedly involved in the cyclone relief scam, nor their relatives, will be given tickets,” Biswal said.

In the first phase, BJD had announced candidates for 25 of the 31 wards under the Barabati Assembly constituency, 17 of the 22 wards under Choudwar Assembly constituency and all the six wards under Sadar Assembly constituency.

“The candidates selected reinforce our party president and chief minister Naveen Patnaik’s commitment to give chance to those with a clean image and winning potential to contest for the party,” BJD leader and Barabati MLA Debashis Samantaray told The Telegraph.

While Dharmesh Nayak, a councillor in the 2003-2008 council, has been fielded from ward No. 1, Jaydev Jena (the former CPI-M city unit secretary who had joined the BJD) and Ashok Sharma (councillor elected on a Congress who had joined BJD) have got party tickets from ward Nos. 40 and 23, respectively.

Both the Congress and BJP have declared their list of candidates for all the 59 wards.

Ransacked

Denied a party nomination for corporation polls, an aspiring BJD candidate and his supporters ransacked the house of Choudwar Cuttack MLA Pravat Biswal and attacked his brother.

Nalini Das and his supporters attacked Biswal’s Mahanadi Vihar house when he came to know that the party had not given him a ticket for ward No. 42.

“As party supremo takes the final call on the selection of candidates recommended by a special screening committee that was formed earlier, we (legislators) had no role in the selection process,” Biswal said.

Senior police officers visited the spot and recorded the statements of the MLA’s family members. However, the supporters of Nalini Das denied the allegations and staged a demonstration at Chauliaganj police station.

Nominations filed

Over 140 nominations were filed today. Sitting BJD councillor Kedar Prusty, who filed his papers for ward No. 29 as an Independent, said: “If my party does not nominate me in the second list for one of the remaining 11 wards, I will contest as an Independent candidate.”