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