Sambit Patra

Sambit Patra (born 13 December 1974) is one of the official spokespersons of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Patra is a Surgeon and a former Medical officer at Hindu Rao Hospital. He was one of the non-official directors on the board of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) since 28 October 2017.

Patra was born to Rabindra Nath Patra on 13 December 1974 in Bokaro Steel City, then part of Dhanbad district. His father worked in the Bokaro Steel Plant. He did his primary and intermediate schooling in Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Bokaro. He did his MBBS from VSS Medical College and Hospital, Burla, Sambalpur, Odisha in 1997 and his Master of Surgery (MS) in General Surgery from SCB Medical College, Cuttack, Utkal University in 2002. . He qualified the UPSC Combined Medical Services Examination in 2003 and joined Hindu Rao Hospital (located in Malka Ganj, Delhi) as a Medical Officer.

In 2012, Patra unsuccessfully fought a municipal election as the BJP's candidate from Delhi's Kashmiri Gate and at the same time resigned from his job to pursue politics full-time. Much before the election, in the year 2010, he was appointed as the spokesperson for Delhi unit of BJP. In the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, Patra campaigned for the BJP and gained visibility on national television. When the BJP came to power, Patra became its national spokesperson. In 2017, Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) appointed him as a non-official director of ONGC.

Patra contested the Puri Lok Sabha seat in the 2019 Indian general election, and lost to sitting Biju Janata Dal (BJD) member Pinaki Misra by 11,700 votes.

In February 2016, Patra showed a manipulated version of the famous Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima photograph. Patra held up that image during a TV debate and claimed that the image showed Indian Army soldiers on India's border whereas the actual image depicted an island in the Pacific Ocean and referred to events in 1945 during the Second World War.

In June 2017, Patra retweeted a tweet by a Pakistani news website which has tweeted misleading reports.

In August 2017, Patra tweeted a poster showing an image of Hamid Ansari which alluded to an earlier controversy from 2015 when people had accused then Vice President Ansari of being disrespectful by not saluting when the correct protocol was only for the President to return the salute by the commanding officer leading the parade.

During another television debate, Patra had shown video which purportedly showed Kanhaiya Kumar shouting secessionist slogans in Jawaharlal Nehru University.

In February 2020, Patra tweeted a fake video of ex-INC MLA Naseem Khan chanting 'Pakistan Zindabad.'

In May 2020, A Non-Cognizable Report has been filed against Dr. Patra for defaming comments made against former Indian PMs Jawaharlal Nehru and Rajiv Gandhi.