Biju Janata Dal (BJD) president and Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Tuesday filed his nomination papers for the Odisha Assembly election from his home turf Hinjili Assembly constituency in Ganjam district for the sixth time in a row. Naveen has been representing Hinjili since 2000.

Besides Naveen, the party’s organisation secretary, Pranab Prakash Das aka Bobby, the third in the party’s command after V.K. Pandian, and president, Hockey India, Dilip Tirkey, filed their nomination papers.

Naveen turned up at the Chhatrapur sub-collector office and filed the nomination papers. The mood was upbeat as people from walks of life came to lend their support to Naveen’s candidature. Hinjili, which falls under the Aska Lok Sabha constituency, will go to polls on May 20.

“Naveen’s only agenda is development. Things have changed over the years. If you compare the vote percentage after the BJD-BJP coalition collapsed just ahead of the 2009 election, one would find the vote percentage of Naveen has increased every time, it is proud to be a voter of a chief minister’s constituency,” said a voter.

Before filing the nomination papers, Naveen went to the Maa Tara Tarini Pitha, the presiding deity of the Ganjam, to pay his obeisance. The temple on the hilltop has been refurbished and given a new look. Naveen was accompanied by his close aide Pandian.

Hinjili has been a stronghold of BJD since 2000. The seat was held by the Congress in 1995 but Naveen snatched it from the Congress in 2000. Since then Naveen’s popularity in the constituency has been increasing. In 2019, Naveen polled 94,065 votes while his nearest rival BJP’s candidate Pitambar Acharya fetched 33,905 and Congress’s Sambhu Panigrahi had to be content with only 7,265 votes.

Naveen will also file his nomination papers for the second seat from Kantabanji in Bolangir district on May 2.