leader of the Opposition in the Assembly and senior Congress leader Bhupinder Singh on Saturday ended a ten-day-long high drama and joined the Biju Janata Dal (BJD).
Singh, who also took Congress legislature Party (ClP) secretary and three-time MlA from Brajarajnagar Anup Sai, along with him, to join the BJD, met BJD president and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik at his residence here and celebrated his joining the ruling party by exchanging sweets with Patnaik. Singh, in fact, ate his own words uttered four days ago that he was very much in the Congress.
He had even blamed the media for its speculation that he would resign from the Congress and join the BJD in view of the fact that the Congress was not in favour of his desire to replace another senior party leader and sitting Kalahandi lok Sabha member Bhakta Charan Das to contest Parliamentary elections. Singh’s act of praising Naveen Patnaik’s leadership and claiming that his family was close to Patnaik’s late father Biju Patnaik came as a big surprise since till a fortnight ago he was mounting scathing attacks on Naveen Patnaik in the Assembly and outside for the “failure” of the BJD Government on all fronts during the last 14 years of its rule.
He told the media that Patnaik has promised him to ensure all-round development of the backward KBK region, to which he (Singh) belongs. Singh, who was all along in the Congress, is now tipped as the BJD’s candidate for the Kalahandi lok Sabha seat, in which the BJD does not have a strong nominee of its own to contest the polls.
Anup Sai also paid accolades to Patnaik, saying his constituency has progressed very well in all fields due to the cooperation of the Chief Minister. Shocked senior Congress leaders Narasingha Mishra and Sarat Rout described Sigh’s act as “unfortunate” while Rout claiming that the Congress would benefit from “the BJD ship being overloaded” with joining of lots of leaders from other parties on the eve of the elections and “destined to sink”.
PCC president Jayadev Jena and Union Minister Srikant Jena asserted that the exit of Singh and Anup Sai from the Congress would have no adverse impact on the party; rather they themselves be losers in future. Senior BJP leader Suresh Pujari questioned the morality of Bhupinder Singh’s jumping into the BJD bandwagon after years of attack on the BJD leadership all these years.