Bhubaneswar: A day after resigning from the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), senior Odisha politician Debashish Samantray joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday, saying he was inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision for a developed India.
Samantaray joined the saffron outfit at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi in the presence of BJP national general secretary Arun Singh, Odisha BJP in-charge Vijay Pal Singh Tomar and BJP’s state unit president Manmohan Samal.
He thanked Modi and expressed his keenness to contribute towards the vision of Viksit Bharat. “He (Modi) has blessed me and included me among his team so that I can contribute to his vision for India. He has dreamt of building a developed India, and he is continuously working towards that goal. I have been deeply influenced by his programmes and his personality,” Samantaray said after joining the BJP.
The senior leader expressed hope that the BJP leadership and workers would continue to support him and said he intended to work extensively for the party in Odisha.
Samantaray’s switch to the BJP came just a day after he resigned from the primary membership of the BJD, alleging that he had been “systematically belittled” within the organisation.
After quitting the BJD, Samantaray also met Vice President C. P. Radhakrishnan and tendered his resignation as a Rajya Sabha member.
In his resignation letter addressed to BJD president Naveen Patnaik, Samantaray claimed that despite his long-standing commitment to the party, he felt ignored and undervalued in recent times.
“I shall always be indebted to you for nominating me to Rajya Sabha. I take this opportunity to express my sincere and deepest gratitude to you for giving me an opportunity to serve the people of undivided Cuttack district and to raise issues of Odisha at large, at the national level. I have always dedicated myself to the interest of the party and have, over the ,; years, worked for the party with utmost conviction and commitment. However, I feel that, of late, I have been systematically belittled in the party and that the party does not require my services. Therefore, I have taken this hard decision in the public interest and request you to accept my resignation,” he wrote in a letter to the BJD president.
Samantaray had also criticised the party leadership over internal functioning and alleged that efforts were being made to sideline senior leaders instead of strengthening the organisation.
A seasoned politician, Samantaray was elected to the Rajya Sabha in February 2024 as a BJD nominee. He had earlier represented the Barabati-Cuttack Assembly constituency twice, winning elections in 2009 and 2014.
His exit from the BJD is being seen as another setback for the regional party, which has been facing growing internal dissent after its defeat in the Odisha Assembly elections.
Notably, Samantaray had expressed dissatisfaction with recent developments in the BJD over the past several months. In November last year, he resigned from the post of vice-president of the BJD senior citizen’s cell, questioning the bureaucratic style of functioning and ideological drift in the party. He also abstained during the voting in Rajya Sabha while blaming former bureaucrat-turned-politician and Naveen’s close aide V K Pandian for the sudden change in party’s position on the Waqf Bill.
