Tuesday, 12 October 2021 | PNS | New Delhi
The BJP on Monday experienced a reverse “ghar wapsi” when ahead of the next year’s Assembly polls, Uttarakhand Transport Minister Yashpal Arya quit the saffron party and joined the Congress, his erstwhile party, along with his MLA son Sanjeev here as on the day the saffron party inducted former head of National Conference (NC) in Jammu Devender Rana, who quit the NCon Sunday.
Yashpal Arya and his son, along with their supporters, joined the Congress in the presence of senior party leaders Harish Rawat, KC Venugopal and Randeep Surjewala.
Earlier in the day, they met former Congress president Rahul Gandhi at his residence. His son Sanjeev Arya is an MLA from Nainital. Both Nainital terai region and Bajpur has sizeable sikh population which have major participation against the three-farm laws passed by the Centre.
From 2007 to 2014, Arya was the president of Uttarakhand Congress and had been a former Speaker and a Minister in the Congress Government led by Rawat.
He had switched over to the BJP in 2017 ahead of the assembly elections in Uttarakhand. He currently represents the Bajpur Assembly constituency in the state and earlier represented the Mukteshwar Assembly constituency.
The BJP which has in the recent months admitted at least two Independent MLAs to its fold in Uttarakhand to fortify itself ahead of elections is caught by surprise by Arya’s “ghar wapasi”. On a day when the BJP lost one bigwig in Uttarakhand, it gained one in Jammu region.
A day after resigning from the NC, Devender Rana, the former head of its Jammu division, along with another party leader Surjit Singh Slathia joined the BJP in the BJP headquarters.
Rana and Slathia joined the BJP in the presence of Union Ministers Dharmendra Pradhan, Hardeep Singh Puri and Jitendra Singh.
Rana, who is a former MLA and the younger brother of Union Minister Jitendra Singh, has also served as a political adviser to former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister and National Conference (NC) leader Omar Abdullah.
BJP general secretary in-charge for Jammu and Kashmir Tarun Chugh and its Jammu and Kashmir unit chief Ravinder Raina welcomed them in the party.
Rana has been advocating for the Jammu declaration – a joint declaration of several political, social and business organisations, primarily demanding restoration of statehood for the Jammu region and not for the whole Jammu and Kashmir.
