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BJD elects Arjun Sethi as Parliamentary Party leader

Ahead of the winter session of Parliament, the Biju Janata Dal elected Water Resources Minister Arjun Charan Sethi as its new Parliamentary Party leader.

"We have decided unanimously that in Rajya Sabha the leader of the BJD will be B J Panda, whip will be Vir Bhadra Singh. Arjun Sethi is the BJD leader in Lok Sabha and also leader of the Parliamentary Party, while Brij Kishore Tripathy will be the whip, and Padmanabh Behra secretary in Lok Sabha," Orissa Chief Minister and BJD chief Naveen Patnaik said.

Later, Patnaik along with Sethi met Lok Sabha Speaker Manohar Joshi and urged him to declare the expelled MPs -- Jagannath Mullick, Prabhat Samantaray and Kumudini Patnaik -- as 'unattached' in the House and bar their entry into the party office in Parliament.

The other three rebel MPs, who had last month elected Prasana Acharya as their leader, did not attend the meeting.

The BJP had ten Lok Sabha MPs before the expulsion of the three rebel legislators.

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