Jay Panda quits BJD: ‘Last straw was CM Naveen Patnaik skipping father’s funeral’

Panda also claimed that several BJD leaders conveyed to him privately that they were prevented from paying their respects to Bansidhar Panda, 87, who passed away on May 22 in Bhubaneswar. Panda’s letter reminded Naveen Patnaik that Panda was one of the pallbearers during Biju Patnaik’s funeral. “That the BJD does not want me anymore, and in fact wants me out, is now irrefutable clear.”

He also added that he had stood behind Patnaik through “thick and thin” including when the parliamentary party had split in 2002. “It is ironic that many of the worst critics of you during our party’s first dozen years are now holding key positions in the party, while most of those who struggled with you to overcome them have been discarded,” he wrote.

Adding that he has been “viciously targeted” and harassed, he wrote, “I have been bereaved in ways more than one. My faith that I was assisting you in a party that was decent and committed to certain principles has also died.” Panda’s letter has also conveyed he will be separately writing to the Lok Sabha Speaker regarding his resignation, after completion of his religious obligations attached to the demise of his father.

Panada was earlier suspended from the party’s primary membership on charges of “anti-party activities.” He was also dropped as the party’s parliamentary spokesperson, months after he called for introspection in the BJP following its poor performance in panchayat polls. However, this was not the first time that he was critical about the party’s politics. Often alleging that the party had been taken over by opportunists, Panda, in an article in Odia daily Samaj last year, wrote that the BJD regime had started looking like the “discredited” Congress regime of the 1980s and late 1990s. He had also alleged that founding members of the BJD had lost their access to the CM