Three-time corporator Ananta Narayan Jena was today elected unopposed as the mayor of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) for the second time in a row.
BMC administrator Sanjib Mishra made this announcement after no one other than Jena of BJD filed nomination paper for the post. While the ruling BJD has 49 member in the 67-member BMC, Independents won in 12 seats, four seats were captured by BJP while Congress got only two corporators in the recently concluded BMC elections.
Earlier in the morning, the BJD president and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had announced Jena's name as the party's candidate for the mayor election in BMC.
Besides Jena, name of three other aspirants for the Mayor post was being discussed earlier. However, Patnaik choose Jena for the second time since he had initiated some developmental works such as introducing City Bus services, setting up shopping malls and widening of roads in most parts of the city.
Besides Jena, three BJD corporators -Sk Nizamuddin, Amaresh Jena and Preetinanda Routray were in the race for the post.
Jena, a three-time corporator, had secured 5,024 votes and won the polls from ward number 47 with the highest margin of 4,334.
In the BMC, BJD has 73 per cent of seats with corporators in 49 of 67 wards.
