Keonjhar: BJD’s former Keonjhar Lok Sabha MP Yashbanta Narayan Singh Laguri along with his wife Sakuntala Laguri, also an ex-MP of Keonjhar, joined Congress Friday. Yashbanta had won the Keonjhar Lok Sabha seat in 2009 defeating BJP candidate Ananta Nayak, whereas his wife Sakuntala emerged victorious on a BJD ticket from the same seat by trouncing Nayak in 2014. In 2019, despite ‘better performance’, they failed to get a BJD ticket. The regional party rather picked Chandrani Murmu for Keonjhar parliamentary constituency and was able to retain it. “We both joined the Congress party in the Pradesh Congress Committee office in presence of AICC incharge to Odisha Ajay Kumar, OPCC president Sarat Pattanayak, party leader Bijay Patnaik and other eminent leaders,” said Yashbanta. “BJD is not a democratic party. It has become a proprietor firm. It is controlled by a single non-Odia leader.
We quit BJD protesting anti-Odia attitude of the party. We felt suffocated and quit” Yashbanta said. The former MP also said, “We won the last two elections with a better margin. But later the party neglected us. In the last 10 years, I have been neither given a post nor called for any party programme which hurt us. Now, we will serve the people of Keonjhar like earlier.” “Congress is a national party that has been working for the development of India since independence and its sacrifice for Indian independence could give good governance. We will work hard for the party,” he said.