Former Congress leader Alpesh Thakor joins BJP

Former Congress legislators from North Gujarat Alpesh Thakor and his aide Dhavalsinh Jhala formally joined the BJP on Thursday.

Alleging injustice and ill-treatment by the party leadership, OBC leader Thakor had quit all posts in the Congress in the run up to the Lok Sabha election in April.

Soon after joining the BJP at the party’s State headquarters, Thakor said, “I was admitted in a wrong school. The teachers were weak and they never understood the tone of people. Hence, in the interest of my community and my people, I quit that school and joined a new one.”

“We have seen that people have shown confidence in the leadership of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. The BJP is a cadre-based, disciplined party and has a nationalistic ideology. Unlike the Congress, the BJP listens to the voice of smallest of the workers,” Thakor told the media.

Gujarat BJP chief Jitu Vaghani welcomed Thakor into the party. “Alpeshbhai and Dhavalbhai have been former MLAs of Congress. But today, they have accepted BJP’s ideology and joined us.”

Thakor had joined the Congress just before the State Assembly polls in 2017, in the presence of then Congress President Rahul Gandhi at a grand show of strength in Gandhinagar. He was given a Congress ticket to contest from the Radhanpur constituency and won with a margin of over 15,000 votes.

However, Congress insiders believed that Thakor’s political ambitions grew bigger and he sought to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha poll on a Congress ticket. But failing to do so, Thakor accused the Congress of being unjust and ill-treating him and his associates.

Earlier this month, in the Rajya Sabha poll, despite being Congress legislators, Thakor and Jhala had cross-voted in the favour of BJP candidates — Union External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Jugalji Thakor.

Soon after the voting, Thakor and Jhala resigned as legislators.

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