Bhubaneswar: Five days after quitting Congress, former minister Ganeswar Behera on Sunday joined the BJD at Sankha Bhawan, the party’s headquarters, in Odisha capital.
He was inducted into the Conch party in presence of Rajya Sabha members Manas Mangaraj and Sasmit Patra and MLAs Pratap Jena and Sashi Bhusan Behera.
Speculation is rife that the BJD may field Ganeswar from Kendrapada Assembly seat, which he had lost to Sashi Bhusan Behera in 2019 by a slender margin of 6,320 votes. He was in the fry in the previous two polls too and lost to BJD candidates.
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A two-time MLA, Ganeswar was elected from Pattamundai in 1985 and 1995. He was close to former chief minister JB Patnaik and held many important posts in the Congress organisation. He had earlier to the media that his well-wishers and voters of his constituency have been urging him to join the BJD.
The Congress has been seeing an exodus of prominent leaders ahead of the 2024 elections. Senior leader from Jagatsinghpur district and former state Congress working president Chiranjib Biswal, former minister Surendra Singh Bhoi, sitting MLA Adhiran Panigrahi, and former MLAs, K Surya Rao and Ansuman Mohanty, joined the BJD in the recent past.
The party has also fielded the new entrants, Bhoi and Mohanty, from Balangir and Kendrapada Lok Sabha seats, respectively.
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