The former Mayor of London Borough of Lambeth Neeraj Patil joined the Bharatiya Janata Party here on Monday. Dr. Patil, who is the first Asian origin person to have become the Mayor of Lambeth, is from Gulbarga.
Dr. Patil, who is now a councillor from the Labour Party in Lambeth, said that he would stay back in India till the completion of the election process to actively campaign for the party. “I am ready to travel throughout the country for campaigning,” he told The Hindu .
A medical doctor specialised in accident relief and emergency medicine, Dr. Patil said that he was joining the BJP as it was the “only party that reflects the true diversity and multiculturalism of India”. Also, it is the only party where democracy is followed as even a “chaiwala” (an obvious reference to Narendra Modi) can aspire to become the prime minister of the country, he said.
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Expressing concern that people had lost faith in politics in the last 10 years in India mainly due to the series of scams, he said that the trust deficit in the world’s largest democracy can be restored if the common man joins political parties so that he can change them from the inside.
In fact, British and American democracy allowed more room for accountability mainly because of the large-scale participation and membership of the common people in political parties, he said.
Without naming Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal, he ridiculed him saying: “Staging protests while in power is inviting anarchy and chaos into a system, and allowing it to turn from bad to worse. Staging protests is easy, but governance is a very tough and challenging task.”
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BJP national general secretary Ananth Kumar and the former Ministers S. Suresh Kumar and V. Somanna were present.