Bhubaneswar: Veteran tribal leader and former Chief Minister Giridhar Gamang and 2 members of his family along with former Bargarh MP Sanjay Bhoi will join Congress in New Delhi on January 17.
According to sources, the four leaders, including Gamang, his wife and former Koraput MP Hema Gamang, their son Sishir Gamang and Sanjay met Odisha in-charge Ajoy Kumar in New Delhi on Saturday and will rejoin the party in the presence of the president of All India Congress Committee (AICC) Mallikarjun Kharge.
Notably, the Congress, with an eye on the 2024 elections, has been planning to facilitate the return of a host of senior leaders of the party, who had deserted the party under different circumstances.
Since August last year, around eight months after leaving the BJP and joining the K Chandrasekhar Rao-led Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS), the Gamangs have been contemplating a return to the Congress, which they had quit in 2015, as the BRS has no such immediate plan for Odisha. Both Giridhar Gamang and his son resigned from the primary membership of the BJP on January 25, 2023, and joined the BRS two days later.
A nine-time MP from Koraput Lok Sabha constituency between 1972 and 2004, Giridhar Gamang had last contested from the seat in the 2014 elections and lost to Jhina Hikaka of the BJD.
Sanjay, son of Krupasindhu Bhoi, had won from Bargarh Lok Sabha constituency on a Congress ticket in the 2009 elections with 3.97 lakh votes. Despite polling over 2.74 lakh votes, he finished third behind the BJD and BJP candidates in 2014. He quit the Congress and joined the BJP after being denied ticket in 2019 elections.
Though Congress is yet to begin a formal exercise for candidate selection, Bhoi may get a ticket from Bargarh in the upcoming elections, the sources added.
