Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, Jul 28: 

Former Odisha BJP President and sitting Patnagarh MLA KV Singh Deo was today named the leader of the BJP Legislature Party in Odisha Assembly.

KV Singh Deo

A notification on the context was issued today by BJP headquarters in New Delhi, said Odisha BJP President Basant Panda.

Singh Deo succeeds Basant Panda in the role. Interestingly, Panda succeeded Singh Deo as Odisha BJP President this January.

While Singh Deo was long speculated to be the party’s obvious choice for the position of Legislature Party Leader after he resigned from the position of Odisha BJP President in January; in a dramatic turn of events, he issued a statement on March 12, 2016 expressing his disinterest in accepting the position even if offered by the party.

The party had retained the services of Basant Panda as its leader of legislature party following the incident.

Questioned about his reluctance earlier, Singh Deo today said “I wanted the responsibility to be given to a young face. That is the reason I had been reluctant to take over the position. However, I will try to discharge the duty assigned by the party to the best of my ability.”

“I will speak to other legislators and raise the issues pertaining to interests of common men of Odisha in the Assembly. Right now, we will adopt a wait and watch approach. We will brief the media on the exact issues we plan to take up before the next Assembly session,” he added.

It may be noted here that BJP has ten legislators in a 147 member Odisha Assembly.