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Odisha ex-CM Giridhar Gamang, 80, who quit Congress in 2015, to rejoin party
Giridhar Gamang, a nine-time Koraput Lok Sabha MP between 1972 and 2004, hopped across to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) soon after exiting the Congress in 2015
Bhubaneswar: Giridhar Gamang, the 80-year-old former Odisha chief minister who quit the Congress in 2015, is expected to rejoin the party along with his wife and son on January 17, people familiar with the matter said.
Gamang, a nine-time Koraput Lok Sabha MP between 1972 and 2004, hopped across to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) soon after exiting the Congress in 2015. He quit the BJP in January last year and days later, joined the K Chandrasekhar Rao-led Bharat Rashtra Samithi.
Giridhar Gamang and his son Shisir have been speculated to be on their way out of the BRS. On Saturday, Shishir Gamang put out a photograph of his meeting with Congress leader Ajay Bose.
Odisha Congress leaders said Giridhar Gamang, wife Hema and son Sishir were likely to join the Congress in Delhi on Wednesday.
Back in 1999, Giridhar Gamang had controversially voted in a no-confidence motion against the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in May 1999 though he was Odisha chief minister - he had taken over as CM in February 1999 but not resigned from his Lok Sabha seat.
Once counted among the country’s best-known tribal leaders, Gamang, who represented Koraput nine times during 1972-2004, was a union minister for 11 years in central governments led by Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao. He was elevated as chief minister on February 18, 1999, but his term was cut short on December 6, 1999, by the party after 10,000 people died in the super cyclone.
Gamang ended his 43-year-long association with the Congress in 2015, blaming the party for humiliation and loss of self-respect.
Gamang last contested the Koraput seat in 2014 and lost the election to the tribal-dominated seat to Jhina Hikaka of Odisha’s Biju Janata Dal. The father-son duo were cold-shouldered by BJP after Shisir Gamang came a distant fourth in the 2019 assembly polls on the Gunupur seat winning only 11% of the votes.
Apart from the Gamangs, Sanjay Bhoi, who had won from Bargarh Lok Sabha constituency on a Congress ticket in 2009 elections, would also join the party. In 2014, Bhoi finished third behind the BJD and BJP candidates. He quit the Congress and joined the BJP after being denied a ticket in the 2019 elections. Bhoi is likely to be fielded from Bargarh.
