Odisha BJP vice-president Bhrugu Baxipatra resigned from his party and joined the BJD on Wednesday. Speculations are rife that the BJD will nominate him from the Berhampur Lok Sabha seat, where he lost as a BJP candidate in 2019.
Baxipatra joined the BJD at the party’s headquarters Sankha Bhawan in Bhubaneswar. BJD’s Berhampur MP Chandrasekhar Sahu welcomed him to the party. Baxipatra quit the BJP after it fielded MLA Pradeep Panigrahy, who was expelled by the BJD, from the Behrampur seat.
Meanwhile, BJD appointed Sahu, the incumbent MP, as its vice president and chairman of the manifesto committee. The party is yet to announce the other members of the committee that will prepare the manifesto for the simultaneous elections to the 147-member assembly and the 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
Sahu’s appointment is being seen as a move to accommodate him in case Baxipatra gets nominated from the Berhampur seat. The BJD has so far announced candidates for 15 of the state’s 21 Lok Sabha seats. Besides Berhampur, the other seats are Bolangir, Bargarh, Keonjhar, Bhadrak and Balasore.
In the last Lok Sabha polls, Baxipatra had secured 3.49 lakh votes but lost to Sahu by a margin of around 94,000 votes.
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