Bijoy faces sack from BJP for anti-party activities

BHUBANESWAR: Senior BJP leader Bijoy Mohapatra could be ousted from the party after the Kendrapada district unit on Friday recommended his expulsion for alleged anti-party activities.
Bijoy, a national executive member and a native of Kendrapada district, who of late has been at odds with the party's state leadership, smelled a conspiracy by some senior state leaders to sack him.

"It is a long drawn plan to throw me out. Instead of fighting for the people, their agenda is to fight against me. The process to remove me was on for some months. If anybody feels the party can do better without me I wish them luck," Bijoy told TOI.

Kendrapada district president Duryodhan Sahoo said the committee led by him has decided to drop Bijoy as a special invitee to the district panel and has urged party president Amit Shah and state chief Basanta Panda to remove him from the BJP's primary membership.

The development comes a day after two factions of BJP workers fought against each other during an event at Singitia village in Garadapur block of Kendrapada on the issue of members of rival political parties joining the saffron camp. Sahoo said supporters of Bijoy were behind the ruckus.

Speaking about the charges, Bijoy said the cadres who were not invited for the event reacted in that manner. "If the leadership wants to defame me for that, I can't help it. I am with the people and I will be with them and will continue to raise their issues," he added.

State vice-president Sameer Mohanty dismissed the conspiracy angle and said Bijoy needs to make up his mind whether or not he wants to stay with the BJP. "He has been speaking in a different tone than the party's. He has not even spared criticising the Prime Minister," Mohanty said.

On December 10, Bijoy had endorsed BJD's allegation that the Union government was favouring Chhattisgarh in the Mahanadi water sharing dispute, embarrassing his own party.

"Mahanadi issue is not partisan, it is in the state's interest," Bijoy had then reasoned.

A founder leader of the BJD, Bijoy joined the BJP in 2009.

Following his acrimonious exit from the regional party in 2000, when he was denied a ticket on the eve of the assembly election, Bijoy went on to form the Odisha Gana Parishad (OGP) in 2001 and six years later merged it with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

When NCP decided to go for a pre-poll alliance with the BJD in 2009, Bijoy left and joined the BJP.