The three BJD nominees for Rajya Sabha polls on Mondayfiled their nomination papers before Assembly Secretary Amiya Kumar Sarangi, the Returning Officer, in the presence of party supremo and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
Each candidate submitted two sets of papers having 10 proposers.
While Prasanna Acharya was the first to file his nomination, Bishnu Charan Das was second and N Bhaskar Rao was the last to file his papers.
The three candidates are crorepatis. As per the affidavits submitted to the Returning Officer by them, Rao is the richest with assets worth Rs 33,37,48,00 followed by Acharya with Rs 5,28,24,000 and Das with Rs 1,22,73,000 assets.
Das also stated in the affidavit that a criminal case is pending against him while no cases are pending against Acharya and Rao.
On May 27, Patnaik had named Acharya, Das and Rao as party candidates for the three seats in the Upper House set to fall vacant on July 1 after the retirement of Pyarimohan Mohapatra, Bhupinder Singh and Baishnab Charan Parida.
The elections would be held on June 11.
With just a day left for nominations to close, the BJP and the Congress are yet to take a call on whether to field a candidate or not.
With 117 members in the 147-House, the BJD has more than the 37 first preference votes that it needs to win each of the three seats.
The last date for withdrawal of nominations is June 3. “If the (three) nomination papers remain valid till that date then elections will not be held,” said Sarangi.
