Former MP Baijayant Panda’s much delayed entry to the BJP is likely to take place on 8 December, sources in the party said here on Wednesday.
The ‘entry by default’ has been largely due to the fact that two BJP heavyweights and national executive committee members, Bijoy Mohapatra and Dilip Ray, quit the party on 30 November delivering a body blow to the Odisha unit of the party.
Panda had been kept waiting for over five months, though his supporters were making tall claims over his proximity to the top BJP leaders such as Arun Jaitley, Ram Madhav and several others.
They claimed that Panda has had several rounds of talks with PM Modi and Amit Shah.
It is the positioning in the party at a high level that is being negotiated, they had said.
But the long wait had demolished all such hype and a certain degree of uncertainty had crept in.
The desertion of Mohapatra, who is respected by politicians across the political divide for his organisational abilities, and Ray, who has a certain degree of charisma, had prompted the BJP to somehow salvage the image of the party by inducting Panda given his profile, particularly in the national media circuit.
Sources in the BJP concede that Panda lacks the kind of organisational ability of Mohapatra and he does not have a mass base.