Bhubaneswar: History repeated itself after 24 years. Back in 2000, the BJD expelled its senior leader, Bijoy Mohapatra, for indiscipline and anti-party activities after denying him a ticket. After 24 years in 2024, the BJP has taken a similar step on the orders of state president Manmohan Samal. Through a press release, the party announced the expulsion of Bijoy Mohapatra, citing anti-party activities and a breach of party discipline.
Mohapatra, who had previously left the BJD, spent considerable time in Odisha politics with his own political party, the Odisha Gana Parishad (OGP) before trying his luck with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). As the OGP got dissolved and the NCP got divided, he eventually joined the BJP.
During his political journey, Mohapatra contested from both the Patkura and Mahakalapada seats as a BJP candidate. In 2009, he ran for the Patkura seat, followed by the Mahakalapada seat in 2014. In 2019, he once again contested from Patkura. Although he had resigned from the BJP before the 2019 elections, he rejoined the party as a candidate for the same election. Since then he had been in the BJP as a state working member of the party.
Interestingly, this time the recent action against him was taken because of his son, Arvind Mohapatra, who stood as a BJD candidate in the election from the Patkura assembly seat. Although Arvind joined the BJD, Bijoy actively campaigned for his son without considering his position in the political rival party BJP.
Now the BJP expelled Bijoy along with two other leaders: Sarada Pradhan (Bulu), an independent candidate from the Mahanga assembly seat and Rakesh Mallik, an independent candidate from the Soro assembly seat. These expulsions were also due to indiscipline and anti-party activities.
Notably, Bulu Pradhan had been a BJP candidate in Mahanga during the 2019 elections. Earlier, in 2014, he secured 61,657 votes as an independent candidate in the same constituency whereas BJP got 3,572 votes. He got expelled from the party this time, as he went against the decision of the party standing as an independent candidate. Pradhan is known to be close to Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
