Daijiworld Media Network
New Delhi, Mar 16: With less than a month left for the seven-phase Lok Sabha elections to kick-off, party-hopping is going on at a hectic pace across the nation. Some key names from the Congress have hopped over to the BJP in search of better prospects, while some from BJP have crossed over to other parties for various reasons.
On Saturday March 16, the BJP saw three of its regional leaders quit the party in favour of other parties.
In Uttar Pradesh, a key state for both the BJP and the Congress and its grand allies, the BJP suffered a major shock when its MP Shyama Charan Gupta joined the Samajwadi Party (SP). Hours before the BJP was to release its first list for the Lok Sabha polls from UP, Gupta decided to switch over to SP and will be contesting from Banda constituency. He had contested on SP ticket thrice in the past, winning once and losing twice, before contesting on BJP ticket and winning in 2014 elections from Pragyaraj (formerly Allahabad).
BJP suffered another jolt on Saturday when its sitting MP from Tezpur in Assam, Ram Prasad Sarmah, quit the party alleging that the 'new intruders in the party' had neglected him. Sarmah's name was not included in the party's panel of probable candidate for Tezpur Lok Sabha seat.
Sarmah said he was resigning from the primary membership of the BJP after serving the RSS and VHP for 15 years and the BJP for 29 years.
"I have left BJP today. I really feel pained in my heart for those old BJP workers of Assam who are most neglected in the party by the new intruders in the party," he said in a Facebook post.
"I felt greatly insulted when my name, a sitting MP and the President of Assam Gorkha Sammelan, did not find place in panel sent up by the state BJP committee," Sarmah said in another post. Sarmah alleged that 'old guards' of the party who had toiled for decades and brought the BJP to power were now 'most neglected and ill treated'.
Sarmah, who belongs to the Gorkha community, was elected to the Lok Sabha the first time in 2014 from the Tezpur Parliamentary constituency which has a sizeable Gorkha population. His candidature was at stake since his daughter's arrest in connection with the APSC job scam.
In a gain for the Congress, Manish Khanduri, son of senior BJP MP and former Uttarakhand chief minister Bhuwan Chandra Khanduri, joined the party in the presence of party president Rahul Gandhi in a rally at Dehradun in Uttarakhand. A retired Army major general, Bhuwan Khanduri is the MP representing Garhwal. He served as chairperson of the parliamentary standing committee on defence before being removed from the post last year.
After joining the Congress, Manish Khanduri said he joined the party with the blessings of his father. "He asked me if I can walk on path of truth, I said, ‘yes’," he told the gathering at the rally.
In Karnataka, three MLAs from the BJP - K B Shanappa, Baburao Chouhan and Shymarao Pyati - are reportedly set to join the Congress, according to a media report.