Lok Sabha MP Baijayant Panda resigns from Biju Janata Dal

Lok Sabha MP from Odisha’s Kendrapara constituency, Baijayant Panda, resigned from the Biju Janata Dal on Monday.

Mr. Panda, who is the vice-president of IMFA, a ferro alloy producer, was suspended from the primary membership of the BJD for “anti-party” activities on January 24.

The dissident MP, who remained a Rajya Sabha member of the BJD from 2000 to 2006 and again from 2006 to 2009, had won from the Kendrapara Lok Sabha constituency twice as a BJD nominee — first in 2009 elections and again in 2014.

“It is with deep anguish, hurt and sorrow that I have decided to quit the kind of politics into which our BJD has descended,” wrote Mr. Panda in his three-page resignation letter addressed to Chief Minister and BJD president Naveen Patnaik.

“With the BJD and you yourself having made it abundantly clear that I am unwanted, it is only right for me to dissociate from it,” said Mr. Panda.

Mr. Panda said that he will be separately conveying his decision formally to the Lok Sabha Speaker to accept his resignation from the House.