Rajasthan Assembly Elections: Congress has suffered a major setback ahead of the assembly elections as several leaders from the grand old pary, including party stalwart and former minister Ram Gopal Bairwa and former MLA Ashok Tanwar, on Saturday joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Jaipur.
The Congress leaders joined BJP in the presence of MP Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and state party president CP Joshi.
Welcoming the new leaders in the party fold, Joshi said, "It seems that we will make Jhotwara 'Congress-mukt'. I express gratitude to all of you for reposing faith in the BJP under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi".
Who is Ashok Tanwar
The former Haryana Congress chief Tanwar, after quitting the Congress in 2019, has been consistently switching parties. In February 2021, he even established his own party, 'Apna Bharat Morcha.' He later joined the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in November 2021.
He was once known as a close associate of the former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi during Gandhi's tenure as the head of the Indian National Youth Congress (INYC). Tanwar held the position of chief in the INYC.
However, Tanwar after a prolonged turf war with the former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda quit Congress in October 2019 ahead of the state Assembly polls.
In the 2019 Haryana Assembly elections, Tanwar had extended his support to Dushyant Chautala's Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) and campaigned against Congress. In 2009, he won the Lok Sabha elections from Sirsa in Haryana as a Congress candidate. However, he had lost the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Rameshwar Dadhich joins BJP
Earlier, a senior leader and Jodhpur mayor Rameshwar Dadhich, who had filed his nomination for the upcoming state polls from the Soorsagar constituency as an independent candidate, withdrew his papers and joined the BJP.
Notably, Dadhich, who is a close associate of Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok, has parted ways with the Congress after a 50-year-long association.
Vinod Sharma, the former Dausa district president of the Congress also joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Additionally, in Jaipur, former minister Rajpal Singh Shekhawat, who had submitted his nomination for the Jhotwara constituency against the BJP's Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, decided to withdraw his candidacy after discussions with the party's high command.
What happened in 2018 elections?
The deadline for withdrawing nominations ended on Thursday (November 9). The 200-member Rajasthan Assembly is scheduled for elections on November 25, and the counting of votes will be on December 3.
In 2018, Congress won 100 seats in the 2018 Assembly polls. BJP followed at 73 seats while BSP garnered 6 seats. Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) gathered 3 seats with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Bhartiya Tribal Party (BTP) mustered 2 seats each. Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) managed to grab just one seat while there were 13 independent candidates in the 2018 Assembly Elections.
(With ANI inputs)
