Bhubaneswar: Former Odisha Minister Raghunath Mohanty and ex Balasore MLA Jiban Pradip Dash returned to the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) along with their supporters today.
Raghunath Mohanty and Jiban Pradip Dash re-joined the conch party after meeting president Naveen Patnaik at his residence Naveen Niwas.
Welcoming both Mohanty and Dash to the Biju Janata Dal, Naveen Patnaik said that with the participation of these two leaders, the BJD will be further strengthened in Balasore district. He advised both of the leaders to further expand the organizational work of the party in the district.
Meanwhile, both Mohanty and Dash expressed their gratitude to Naveen Patnaik for accepting them into the BJD and announced that they will work to further strengthen the BJD in the eight assembly constituencies of the district along with Badasahi constituencies.
Several senior BJD leaders welcomed both of them at the Sankha Bhawan. BJD’s senior vice president Debi Prasad Mishra along with other party leaders like Pratap Jena, Pranab Prakash Das, Snehangini Chhuria, Lekhasri Samantsinghar, and Lenin Mohanty gave a cordial welcome to the two veteran leaders, who are prominent political figures in Balasore.
It is to be noted here that Raghunath Mohanty had joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after quitting BJD ahead of the 2019 election while Jiban Pradip Dash also had joined the saffron fold after leaving BJD in 2029 after he was suspended by Naveen Patnaik for his anti-party activities.
Later in Apr 2024, Mohanty tendered his resignation from BJP and Jiban Pradip Dash also resigned after the induction of former Balasore MP Rabindra Kumar Jena into BJP on March 11, 2026. Dash had cited a decline in the party’s ethical standards and value-based politics as the cause of his resignation.