With the BJP central leadership now calling the shots in Rajasthan where Bhajan Lal Sharma, a first-time MLA, was made the chief minister instead of Raje, the former chief minister’s supporters now find themselves staring at an uncertain future.
Jaipur: A dramatic scene awaited the journalists present at the Rajasthan Congress’s headquarters in Jaipur, as two-time former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Prahlad Gunjal emphatically proclaimed his seniority in the saffron party, which he quit before joining the Congress on Thursday.
“When I had become the MLA, the Rajasthan chief minister was a sarpanch, while the incumbent BJP state president used to be a panchayat samiti member,” Gunjal said, before vowing to work hard to strengthen the Congress — a party he till now had opposed bitterly in his four-decade-old political career — in the Hadoti region of Rajasthan.
Gunjal, a loyalist of senior BJP leader and former chief minister Vasundhara Raje, is expected to be declared as the Congress’s candidate for the Kota parliamentary seat, which is currently held by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla. After joining the Congress, Gunjal launched a scathing attack on the BJP, alleging that the voice of the common worker is being suppressed in his former party.
Gunjal was earlier fielded by the BJP in the Assembly elections last year from the Kota North seat but lost to senior Congress leader Shanti Dhariwal.
Even though Rajasthan Congress president Govind Singh Dotasra maintained that the decision to induct Gunjal was unanimously supported by all Congress leaders, Dhariwal, who shares a bitter relationship with Gunjal, was conspicuously missing from the latter’s induction ceremony at the Congress office in Jaipur.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.