In a major jolt to the Congress party, MP Geeta Koda, the wife of former Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday, merely months ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. 

Koda represents the Singhbhum Lok Sabha seat, which she won on a Congress ticket in 2019. 

She joined the saffron party in the presence of BJP's Jharkhand unit president Babulal Marandi. "I joined the BJP today. The Congress has put the country in trouble by indulging in appeasement politics. 

The party says it will take everyone along, but it takes only its family along," she said. Koda was born in 1983 and is a native of Kiriburu in West Singhbhum. 

She became the youngest MLA in the Jharkhand assembly in 2009 from the Jagannathpur constituency. Koda was married to Madhu Koda in 2004 and the couple have three children - two daughters and a son. Jharkhand's Singhbhum Lok Sabha seat is reserved for scheduled tribes candidates. 

Notably, Singhbhum was only the lone seat where the Congress won in the 2019 elections, and Koda became the first woman to win the constituency. She defeated the then state BJP president Laxman Gilua by over 70,000 votes.

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