Odisha: Congress plans return of many estranged top leaders into party fold
Ex-CM Giridhar Gamang, former minister Srikant Jena are prominent faces who are likely to rejoin party this week
By Mahendra Darjee
Bhubaneswar : Eyeing to grab power in 2024, the Congress is planning to facilitate the return of a host of senior leaders of the party who in the past had jumped into other political outfits under different circumstances.
Former chief minister Giridhar Gamang and former Union minister Srikant Jena are among prominent faces who are likely to return to the party this week. Giridhar Gamang, according to sources in the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC), is likely to return to the party in the presence of central leaders in New Delhi. His wife Hema Gamang and son Shishir Gamang are likely to rejoin the party in presence of the newly appointed Odisha in-charge Dr Ajay Kumar after he arrives in Odisha on Saturday.
Giridhar and his son Shishir had left the Congress and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Hema had distanced herself from the Congress for over a decade now.
Sources said the Congress is actively contemplating to revoke the expulsion order on former Union parliamentary and tourism minister Shrikant Jena anytime soon now. He will rejoin the Congress in the presence of Dr Ajay Kumar in Bhubaneswar.
Sanjaya Bhoi, former Lok Sabha member from Bargarh, and Koraput ex-MLA Krushna Sagaria are also likely to return to the Congress early this month. OPCC chief Sarat Pattanayak and the party central leaders have reportedly held talks with Bhoi and Sagaria in this regard. Both the leaders, sources added, have consented to return to the party fold.
The OPCC chief, who is in New Delhi now, told reporters that the party would win 15-16 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats and form the government in the state by getting more than the required number of seats. Odisha Legislative Assembly has 147 seats and the majority mark is 74.
The Congress has now one Lok Sabha member from the state. It has got nine MLAs in the Assembly.
