Former BJD MLA Rajendra Kumar Das To Join BJP On March 4

Bhubaneswar, Mar 2: Ahead of the ensuing simultaneous Lok Sabha and Odisha Assembly elections, former Dhamnagar MLA Rajendra Kumar Das will join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on March 4, sources said on Saturday.

Das, popularly known as Raju Das, won as an MLA from Dhamnagar constituency in Bhadrak district on a Biju Janata Dal (BJD) ticket in 2009. The BJD denied him a ticket in 2014 polls. The regional party again gave him the party ticket in 2019, but he lost.

During the 2022 Dhamnagar by-poll, BJD again denied Das a party ticket, following which he filed his nomination papers as an independent candidate and lost. Later, Das was expelled from the BJD for his alleged anti-party activities.

In the last two weeks, three sitting BJD MLAs - Jaydev MLA Arabinda Dhali, Gopalpur MLA Pradeep Panigrahi and Chilika MLA Prasanta Kumar Jagadev- joined the saffron party.