Jharsuguda: Mangal Sahoo, BJP’s Jharsuguda district president, resigned on Monday ahead of the byelection to the Brajrajnagar Assembly constituency on May 31.
Sahoo resigned a day after the BJP named Radharani Panda, former MLA from Brajrajnagar, as its candidate for the bypoll to the Assembly seat in Jharsuguda district.
Sahoo, associated with the BJP for the last 25 years, sent his resignation to state BJP president Samir Mohanty. “My aim is to strengthen the party organisation but that has become impossible nowadays,” he wrote in the letter.
Radharani had defeated BJD’s Anup Kumar Sai in 2014 but lost to Kishore Mohanty of the ruling party by a margin of 11,634 votes in the 2019 Assembly polls.
The bypoll was necessitated following the death of sitting BJD MLA from Brajrajnagar and former Speaker Kishore Mohanty on December 30, 2021, following a cardiac arrest.