Baijayant J Panda joined the BJP today. (Twitter/@BJP4Odisha) Baijayant J Panda joined the BJP today. (Twitter/@BJP4Odisha)

Former BJD MP Baijayant Jay Panda joined the BJP on Monday evening. While an official reaction from his former party was awaited, workers and leaders of the BJP in Odisha said Panda’s entry, though “not a game changer”, was indeed “good optics” for the party as it seeks to challenge the popularity of Naveen Patnaik, who has been Chief Minister since 2000.

“He (Panda) is no mass leader, but he can still help us build our case that people are fleeing the BJD, which is now beset by corruption and lethargy,” a BJP leader said.

BJP workers also added that Panda’s entry is helpful because his wife heads a news channel in Odisha.

“With higher penetration of television in Odisha compared to say, a decade ago, he is a useful ally in the state,” party workers in Kendrapara, the constituency that Panda represented from 2009 until his resignation from Lok Sabha in 2018, said on Monday.

Panda, BJP workers in Kendrapara also said, has been a “fairly decent” MP, and would be able to help the party win some goodwill in the important seat in coastal Odisha.

The BJP is still organisationally far behind the BJD in the state. Panda will have a role to play in the BJP, which lacks well known ‘younger’ leaders in the coastal Odisha districts of Cuttack, Jagatsinghpur, Jajpur and Bhadrak.

According to these workers, however, Panda stood to benefit more from the BJP than vice versa. They said that they expected him to work with “humility”, and to “not make demands” for a few years at least.

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