New Delhi: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Chhatarpur MLA Kartar Singh Tanwar and former Delhi minister Raaj Kumar Anand on Wednesday joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the national capital. They joined the BJP in the presence of its Delhi president Virendra Sachdeva and national general secretary Arun Singh.
The former MLA from Patel Nagar seat joined the BJP along with his wife Veena Anand, also a former legislator.
Raaj Kumar Anand left AAP in April
Anand, who hails from the Dalit community, was a minister in the government led by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. He quit the party over the issue of corruption following the arrest of the AAP's convener in the excise case.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, Anand had joined the Bahujan Samaj Party and had announced to contest polls from the New Delhi Lok Sabha constituency.
Anand, who served as the social welfare minister in the Arvind Kejriwal Cabinet, tendered his resignation from his post on April 10. He had also announced his resignation from the primary membership of the AAP. This marks the first resignation from the Arvind Kejriwal government following the Delhi CM's arrest on March 21. Anand expressed his reason for resigning, stating, "AAP was born to fight corruption but today the party is stuck in a swamp of corruption. It has become difficult for me to work on the minister's post. I resigned from the post of minister and from the party as I can't connect my name with this corruption.
Anand, who was holding various portfolios including Social Welfare, alleged that there was no Dalit among the top leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). He also took a swipe at Arvind Kejriwal who is in Tihar jail after being remanded in judicial custody in an excise policy-linked money laundering case and has failed to get any relief from the Delhi High Court. "From the Jantar Mantar, Arvind Kejriwal had said that the country will change once politics changes. The politics hasn't changed but the politician has changed," Anand said.
An MLA from the Patel Nagar Vidhan Sabha constituency, he won the 2020 Delhi Assembly Election from the Patel Nagar seat by defeating Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Pravesh Ratn with a margin of over 30,000 votes. He became the Delhi Cabinet minister in November 2022. He was also having additional charge of Labour and Employment, SC and ST, Land and Building, Cooperative and Gurudwara Elections departments.
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