BJD Welcomes Another Turncoat To Its Fold Ahead Of Panchayat Elections In Odisha

Bhubaneswar: A day after former Congress MLA Prafulla Majhi embraced BJD, former Champua MLA Dhanurjaya Sidu, who had resigned from BJP in November, joined the Conch party on Saturday.

Sidu was elected to the Odisha Assembly in 2004 on a Congress ticket. He, however, lost the 2019 elections as a BJP candidate from Telkoi.

The BJD seems to be in a poaching mode to boost its political stock in the forthcoming panchayat and municipal elections. Panchayat polls are likely in January-February 2022.

The saffron party in Odisha got a jolt when state executive member Biswaranjan Mallick had quit the party and joined the BJD on October 29. Another BJP leader from Jajpur, Ramesh Chandra Parida, had also joined the regional party in September.

Besides Majhi, former Congress MP from Nabarangpur Pradeep Majhi has also joined the BJD. He is the third Congress leader from the tribal-dominated Koraput region, a traditional bastion of the Grand Old Party, to have switched over to the ruling camp in the last couple of months.

Former MLA Kailash Chandra Kulesika joined the Conch party on October 20. He represented the Laxmipur segment in the state assembly from 2014 to 2019, when he lost the elections by a thin margin of only 299 votes.

On September 15, former Congress Kotpad MLA Chandrasekhar Majhi joined the BJD.