By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, May 27, 2019: Odisha Chief Minister and BJD president Naveen Patnaik’s move to reserve 33 per cent seats for women in Lok Sabha from Odisha seems to have paid rich dividend for the party with a tribal woman becoming the youngest Member of Parliament (MP) at the age of 25 years and 11 months.

At least five women of the BJD’s 12 winning candidates swept the Lok Sabha polls in 2019.

Chandrani Murmu, a tribal woman, has made history after winning the Lok Sabha seat from Keonjhar in Odisha by becoming the youngest Lok Sabha member in 2019. Earlier, Dushyant Chautala from Hisar Constituency in Haryana, the grandson of noted politician Om Prakash Chautala, was the youngest member of the 16th Lok Sabha.

Murmu, an engineering graduate, defeated two-time BJP MP Ananta Nayak by a margin of 67,822 votes to win the Keonjhar Lok Sabha seat. Murmu completed her schooling from NS Police high school in Keonjhar and from Naidu classes in Bhubaneswar. She has also obtained a B.Tech degree from SOA University.

Chandrani’s father, Sanjiv Murmu, is a government employee and mother Urbashi Soren a housewife.

Her poll campaign faced hurdles when some people launched a smear campaign against her and released a morphed video on social media in a bid to derail her electoral prospects.

The women candidates of Odisha’s ruling party included Pramila Bisoyi from Aska, Chandrani Murmu from Keonjhar, Rajashiree Mallick from Jagathsighpur, Sarmistha Sethy from Jajpur and Manjulata Mandal from Bhadrak.