Team News Riveting
Bhubaneswar, May 4
Denied party funding, Congress candidate from Puri Lok Sabha constituency Sucharita Mohanty Saturday returned the ticket and left the electoral fray.
Sucharita Mohanty cited insufficient campaign funds from the party for taking the extreme step of retreating from the election battle. She struggled financially and could not sustain in the said, despite efforts like a public donation drive and minimized spending,
The journalist-turned-politician alleged that Odisha Congress in-charge Ajoy Kumar asked her to raise funds from her own. In a letter to AICC general secretary (Organisation) K C Venugopal, Sucharita said, “Our campaign in Puri Parliamentary Constituency has been hit hard because the Party has denied me funding. AICC Odisha In-Charge Dr Ajoy Kumar Ji categorically asked me to fend for myself.”
She further said, “I was a salaried professional journalist who entered electoral politics 10 years ago. I have given all I have into my campaign in Puri. I tried a public donation drive to support my campaign for progressive politics without much success so far. I also tried to cut down the projected campaign spending to the minimum.”
“Since I couldn’t raise funds on my own, I knocked at your’s and all other doors of our Party’s Central Leadership, urging them to commit the necessary Party funds for an impactful campaign in Puri Parliament Seat… It is clear that only fund crunch is holding us back from a winning campaign in Puri,” she said.
The opposition party has already lost candidates in Surat and Indore. On April 22, the BJP’s Mukesh Dalal was declared the unopposed winner for the Surat Lok Sabha constituency after the Congress nominee Nilesh Kumbhani was disqualified.
Akshay Bam, who the Congress fielded from Indore, pulled back his name and joined the BJP a few days ago.
The development is likely to give advantage to the BJP candidate Dr Sambit Patra. Puri will go to the polls on May 25.
