Lok Sabha Elections 2024 | Meet the leader: Baijayant Panda

While his family owns a media channel in Odisha, from where he will contest, for the 2024 elections BJP has appointed Baijayant Panda as the election in-charge for Uttar Pradesh.

Political Party: BJP

Parliamentary Constituency: Kendrapara, Odisha

Baijayant Panda was elected to Kendrapara Lok Sabha seat in 2014 on the BJD symbol. In 2018, he was suspended from the BJD for 'anti-party' activities. Subsequently, he resigned the MP post and party membership. In his resignation letter to BJD chief Naveen Patnaik, the Parliamentarian had complained about the absence of BJD leaders at the funeral of his father.

Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, he joined the BJP. The saffron party appointed him as the party's vice president and spokesperson. The move signalled the importance the party has given him — Panda owns an Odisha-based media group — as the BJP looks to improve its tally in the eastern state. Panda has courted several controversies during his stint in both the BJD and the saffron party.

In 2018, he was in the news after a Delhi-based journalist Abhijit Iyer Mitra made anti-Odisha remarks during a visit to the state. Mitra had come to Odisha apparently at the invitation of Panda. The duo had allegedly taken a chopper ride over the eco-sensitive Chilika lake at low level. In 2020, Panda courted another controversy when he likened a police action on journalists in Odisha and Maharashtra to the alleged harassment meted out to scribes in Pakistan.

The former MP, while condemning the "custodial interrogation" of a reporter from the channel owned by his family, said "fascism" must be opposed. In January 2024, the saffron party appointed him as the election in-charge for Uttar Pradesh.