Congress candidate from Puri Lok Sabha seat returns ticket citing funds crunch

Bhubaneshwar: In a major embarrassment to Congress, its candidate for the Puri Lok Sabha constituency in Odisha, Sucharita Mohanty, returned the ticket citing she had run out of funds after the party could not provide adequate resources to fight the polls. Odisha will go to polls on May 13. 
In a letter to the All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary (Organisation), KC Venugopal, Mohanty said that she was asked by the state party leadership to take care of the funds by herself for fighting the polls, adding that she could not raise the funds and hence returned the ticket.
“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. 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,” the 61-year-old wrote in her letter.
“Since I couldn’t raise funds on my own, I knocked at your 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.
Mohanty further alleged that Congress deliberately fielded weak candidates in the seven Assembly seats under the Puri Parliamentary constituency. “I urged the party to change four Assembly candidates. The party told me to fight the election on my own. At a time when the ruling government’s vulgar display of wealth is prevailing at all places, I can’t fight the election without funds,” she said.
“I am a Congresswoman with core Congress values in my DNA. I shall remain a loyal soldier of the Congress and my leader Jananayak Rahul Gandhi,” the journalist-turned-politician penned in her resignation letter.
Reacting to the allegations, AICC in-charge of Odisha, Dr Ajoy Kumar, said that Mohanty returned the ticket after coming to know that the party was planning to change her.
She is alleging that no funds were provided and weak MLA candidates have been fielded which is not true, Kumar said. “The party has nominated its best candidate for the MLA seats and funds will be provided to a candidate when the candidate launches the campaign and seriously fights at the ground,” he added.
In 2014, Sucharita lost to Pinaki Mishra of Biju Janata Dal (BJD) by over 250,000 votes. In 2024, she was scheduled to fight against Bharatiya Janata Party’s Sambit Patra and BJD’s Arup Patnaik, a former commissioner of Mumbai Police.
She is the daughter of former Union Minister late Brajamohan Mohanty.
Her father had represented Puri in the assembly as well as in the Lok Sabha. He was also minister of state and the later assembly speaker from 1974 to 1977 during the Indira Gandhi government.