Baijayant (Jay) Panda: From somebody to nobody in Biju Janata Dal

In his resignation letter, Panda narrated how he was sidelined in the party over the last few years

For Baijayant (Jay) Panda, it was a double tragedy. On May 22, he lost his father Bansidhar Panda, a noted industrialist from Odisha and founder of Indian Metals and Ferro Alloys (IMFA), and seven days later, he left the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), the party he had helped build and represented in Parliament for the last 18 years, with a heavy heart.

“Now on the seventh day of my bereavement before I embark on the prescribed religious rituals, I realise that I have been bereaved in more ways than one,” Panda wrote in his three-page resignation letter to BJD President and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.

In the letter, replete with feelings of emotion and deep anguish, Panda narrated how he was sidelined in the party over the last few years despite the close familial relationship between his father and Biju Patnaik (Naveen Patnaik’s father), his camaraderie with the CM, who  plunged into politics after “Biju uncle’s” death, and his role in the formation of the BJD in the late 1990s.

 After being nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 2000, Panda soon became the face of the BJD in Delhi, appearing on national TV channels, emphatically putting forth his party’s point of view on various issues. Many saw him as a potential successor to Patnaik.

Panda, who was renominated to the Rajya Sabha in 2006, was handpicked by Patnaik in 2009 to contest from the prestigious Kendrapada Lok Sabha seat, a constituency earlier represented by legendary Biju babu.

“I had stood by you and the party through thick and thin, unhesitatingly helping you to take on many challenges faced over the years, including when the parliamentary party had split in 2002 and the events of May 29, 2012 (when Pyari Mohapatra, former close aide of Patnaik, staged a failed coup),” Panda wrote in the letter.

After Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014, Panda praised some of his policy initiatives in a couple of articles in the national media and also accompanied the PM to his visit to Japan. These were interpreted before Patnaik as Panda’s growing intimacy with the BJP government at the Centre. 

Then came an article in Odia daily Samaj in which Panda lamented that the BJD had deviated from its core strength to goondaism and corruption, and called for an introspection.  This widened the fissure between him and Patnaik.

In January this year, Panda was suspended from the BJD for alleged anti-party activities. “Panda had expressed his intent before the party supremo in 2014 to nominate him for the post of chairman of he Lok Sabha’s finance standing committee, but in view his conflicting interest of holding  legislative and corporate positions (Panda is vice-chairman of IMFA), the party supremo refused to oblige,” Surya Narayan Patra, a minister and party spokesman, had said after Panda’s suspension.

The relations between Panda and Patnaik reached a flashpoint when he accused an IAS officer in the CM Office of indulging in political activity and controlling the party affairs. 

But, according to Panda, the lack of minimum courtesy by party leaders, including Patnaik, to pay last respects to his father pushed him to quit the BJD. He has conveyed intention to resign from the Lok Sabha after the rituals following his father’s death.