Former Odisha Chief Minister and nine-time MP Giridhar Gamang, 80, returned to the Congress fold on Wednesday, nine years after he resigned from the party.

A popular tribal leader, Gamang joined the BJP in May 2015, one month after he quit the Congress. In January 2023, he also left the BJP, citing “humiliation”, and joined the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) as the K Chandrasekhar Rao-led party looked to expand beyond its home state of Telangana.

Given Gamang’s base in Southern Odisha — he won the Koraput Lok Sabha seat nine times between 1971 and 2009 — the BRS hoped it could have a face through which it can reach out to Telugu voters in Odisha. But the BRS’s own ambitions took a hit after it lost power in Telangana in the November 2023 Assembly polls.

Sensing no future in the BRS, Gamang has now returned to the Congress along with his wife Hema Gamang, a former MP from Koraput, son Shishir Gamang and former MP Sanjay Bhoi barely a couple of months before the simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in Odisha.

They rejoined the Congress fold at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters in the presence of senior Congress leader Ajay Maken and AICC in-charge of Odisha Ajoy Kumar.

Bhoi, a former Congress MP from Bargarh during 2009-14, switched to the BJP in December 2022. The Congress is likely to field him from the Bargarh parliamentary seat now.

In his reaction, Gamang said, “I have returned to Congress, where I had spent more than four decades of my political career. The party has accepted me and I am thankful to them. Though I had left the party, I had never left its thoughts and ideologies.”

Asked whether he would be contesting in the upcoming polls, Gamang said he would accept whatever responsibility will be given to him by the party.

Sources told The Indian Express that the Gamang family has been assured by the Congress of “at least two tickets” in the polls slated for April-May.

Lone vote leading to Vajpayee govt fall

Gamang had been in the national spotlight for his controversial vote during a no-confidence motion that led to the fall of the 13-month-old BJP-led NDA government under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on April 17, 1999. Despite having become the CM of Odisha two months before the vote, he had not resigned from the Lok Sabha and cast his vote in the no-confidence motion. Vajpayee government had lost the motion by just one vote.

Gamang’s CM stint also did not last long, stretching for just 10 months between February 1999 and December 1999. He was forced to resign, just three months ahead of the Assembly elections in the state in 2000, in the aftermath of a devastating cyclone that claimed over 10,000 lives.

When he left the Congress in May 2015, Gamang, known for his loyalty to the Gandhi family, claimed that he was being “humiliated”.

“Since 1999, I have been humiliated in public for bringing down the Vajpayee government. Till today, neither my party nor my leaders have come out with the truth, nor have they protected me from public criticism. Loyalty to the party has turned into a liability for the party,” Gamang said, shortly after faxing his resignation letter to then party president Sonia Gandhi. “I have done nothing wrong. I want to be free.”

Gamang had also served as a Union minister for about 11 years under the PMs Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao.

He had last fought the Lok Sabha election in 2014 on a Congress ticket and lost to the BJD’s Jhina Hikaka by 20,000 votes.

Gamang’s son Shishir, who contested the 2019 Assembly election from the Gunupur seat, had finished fourth by securing only 16,491 votes, garnering just 11.55% of the votes polled.