Bhubaneswar, Mar 4: BJD's Telkoi MLA Premananda Nayak and former Dhamnagar MLA Rajendra Das today joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of the Lok Sabha and Odisha Assembly elections.
Former Bhadrak MLA Naren Palai, who had resigned from the Congress recently, also joined the saffron party.
The three leaders joined the saffron party along with their supporters at the BJP’s state headquarters in presence of party’s state president Manmohan Samal.
Notably, Nayak had secured the Telkoi seat in 2009 and 2019 assembly elections on a BJD ticket. He had also served as the Skill Development and Technical Education Minister during Naveen Patnaik’s fifth term.
Similarly, Das emerged victorious in 2009 elections and became Dhamnagar MLA on a BJD ticket. However, the conch party denied him ticket in the 2014 polls. Despite getting the party ticket in 2019 elections, he lost to BJP’s Bishnu Sethi.
The party did not give ticket to Das during the 2022 Dhamnagar by-poll following which he filed his nomination papers as an independent candidate and lost. Later, he was expelled from the BJD for his alleged anti-party activities.
Earlier, former minister and five-time BJD MLA Arabinda Dhali, former BJD MLA Mukunda Sodi, retired Air Marshal Dilip Kumar Patnaik, sitting BJD MLAs Pradeep Panigrahi and Prashant Jagdev had also joined the BJP.