Arvinder Singh Lovely on Saturday joined the BJP, less than a week after he quit as the Delhi Congress chief citing the lack of a free hand to run the party affairs.
Along with him, three former Congress MLAs — Raj Kumar Chauhan, Naseeb Singh, and Neeraj Basoya — and former Youth Congress leader Amit Malik also joined the BJP.
The Congress slammed its former Delhi chief for the move, calling him an “opportunist” and a “cheater”.
This will be Mr. Lovely’s second stint in the BJP after he left it to rejoin the Congress in 2018.
Mr. Lovely, a former Delhi Minister, had been at the helm of the party’s city unit since August last year. He was instrumental in injecting life back into the Congress by uniting its old guard, sources said.
He had resigned as the Delhi Congress chief on April 28 and had earlier junked the claims about him joining the BJP.
He, however, had expressed reservations about the seat-sharing pact with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Lok Sabha tickets to “outsiders” like Udit Raj, a BJP turncoat, from North West Delhi and Kanhaiya Kumar from North East Delhi.
Speaking to the media, Mr. Lovely said his supporters urged him to join the BJP as they wanted him to play an active role in the Capital’s politics.
“Everyone knows the conditions under which I left the Congress. I had resigned and decided to sit at home. Many of my supporters whom I met urged me not to sit at home and join a stronger party to fight for Delhi,” he said.
Mr. Lovely hailed the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for giving him and his colleagues the opportunity to join the party “when they felt lost”.
He asserted that Mr. Modi is set to retain power in the Lok Sabha poll and expressed confidence that the BJP will sweep all seven Lok Sabha seats in the Capital. He also pledged continuous contributions to nation-building and the fight against corruption in Delhi.
‘Will strengthen BJP’
Welcoming the Congress leaders into the party fold, BJP leader and Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said their induction will strengthen his party in Delhi and bolster its prospects in the May 25 Lok Sabha poll in the city.
Mr. Basoya said there was “no real connect” between INDIA bloc partners — AAP and the Congress. He accused AAP of branding the Congress as corrupt, only to join hands with them later, as Delhi’s ruling party is itself now “mired in corruption”.
‘Don’t care about him’
Meanwhile, the Delhi Congress interim chief, Devender Yadav, criticised Mr. Lovely for quitting the Congress and called him an “opportunist”. “The Congress does not care about such people. It was strong before and will remain strong in future too,” he said.
“This is not the first time that he [Lovely] has tried to sabotage the Congress. Whenever there is a chance, he has tried to cheat, and there is no place for cheaters in the party,” Mr. Yadav added.
