Odisha is expected to see fast-paced political activity after renowned hotelier and former Union minister Dilip Ray on Tuesday threw his hat in the Rajya Sabha race as an Independent.
Ray’s announcement came almost immediately after the BJP named its candidates – state chief Manmohan Samal and Rajya Sabha MP Sujeet Kumar – for the March 16 polls.
Sources said Ray, who is expected to file his nomination on March 5 with BJP MLAs as his proposers, had already discussed his candidature with the BJP’s central leadership, with whom he is said to share a good rapport. “I have discussed my candidature with top BJP leadership both at the Centre and at the state. I have good relations with leaders of all parties and I am hopeful to get their support,” Ray told reporters.
Samal too exuded confidence in Ray’s victory. “We would not have supported him if we were not confident of his victory. The results will go in Ray’s favour,” he said.
What is at stake?
Four Rajya Sabha seats from the state are set to fall vacant. The BJP with 78 MLAs in the 147-member House is set to win two of them while the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) with 51 can win one. For the fourth seat, the BJD has joined hands with the Congress (14 MLAs) and fielded well-known urologist Datteswar Hota. A candidate needs at least 30 first-preference votes to win a seat. Currently, the BJP and BJD hold two of these seats each.
Earlier, BJD president Naveen Patnaik named his political secretary Santrupt Misra as the party’s official candidate.
With Ray’s entry into the Rajya Sabha race, a close contest is expected for the fourth seat. Ray eyes support of the dissidents from BJD and Congress as he is known to be someone having links with leaders of all parties.
Odisha last saw a contested Rajya Sabha seat in February 2014, when former cricketer and administrator Ranjib Biswal won as a Congress candidate defeating noted sculptor Raghunath Mohapatra, who was fielded by BJD with support from the BJP, despite not having adequate numbers.
Who is Dilip Ray
Founder and chairman of Mayfair Group of Hotels having as many as 15 premium properties across eight states, Ray, 72, hails from Rourkela in Odisha. As a hotelier and politician, he started his journey in the 1980s and is known to be a close confidant of former CM Biju Patnaik under whom he served as a minister.
Though Ray is among the few loyalists who helped to form the BJD following the death of Biju Patnaik, he was ousted from the party in 2000 after differences crept up between him and Naveen Patnaik.
A three-time MLA, Ray was elected thrice from the Rourkela seat – twice as a Janata Dal nominee between 1985 and 1995 and once as BJP candidate in 2014.
Ray was also nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1996 and served as a Union minister in the H D Deve Gowda and Atal Bihari Vajpayee governments till 2000 handling multiple portfolios.
In 2002, despite Naveen Patnaik’s all out efforts to ensure his loss, Ray successfully contested the Rajya Sabha polls with at least 15 BJD MLAs cross voting in his favour.
Though Ray was convicted by a CBI court in October 2020 in connection with a coal scam related to irregularities in allocation of a block in Jharkhand in 1999 and even awarded a three-year jail term, the conviction was stayed by the Delhi High Court in April 2024, enabling him to contest the Assembly polls, where he lost to the BJD’s Sarada Prasad Nayak from his bastion of Rourkela.
In 2018, Ray quit the BJP along with Bijoy Mohapatra, an old colleague from his BJD days who had challenged Naveen’s leadership, accusing the then BJP leadership of treating them as “furniture”.