In another major jolt to the Himachal lokhit Party (HlP), two of its senior leaders, including a former legislator on Tuesday, joined the BJP in front of senior leaders of the party.
Senior HlP leader and former legislator Navin Dhiman and party’s candidate from Anni Assembly segment Nand lal joined the BJP. Several senior leaders in the past have left the two-year old HlP and joined BJP. Senior BJP leaders said more leaders will be coming back to party fold.
HlP chief Maheshwar Singh on Sunday held a show of strength of party office bearers at Shimla and claimed that those who have gone back to BJP would not affect the party and remaining flock of the party is intact.
The main reason of disintegration of HlP which the leaders claim is the party’s decision not to merge with BJP and not to contest the lok Sabha election. HlP has extended unilateral support to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which party chief claimed was to stop division of anti-BJP and anti-Congress votes.
BJP on Tuesday also got a major boost at Kangra, when a strong independent candidate Arun Mehra who contested the assembly elections from Nagrota Bagwan also joined the party in the presence of party veTeran Shanta Kumar.
Nagrota-Bagwan assembly seat is considered as Congress stronghold seat and Arun Mehra managed to get 20,883 votes and had lost the elections by a narrow margin of 2,700 to Congress candidate and State Transport Minister GS Balli.
Arun Mehra, alias Kuka hails from the strong Other Backward Classes (OBC) community, formally joined BJP with hundreds of supporters. Mehra had informally joined BJP just a week ago and during a public function at Nagrota Bagwan he took membership of BJP in presence of Shanta Kumar.
BJP spokesperson Ganesh Dutt said that party will get strengthened with the home coming of Navin Dhiman and Nand lal, while with the inclusion of Arun Mehra into the party would help the BJP veteran and candidate from Kangra, Shanta Kumar immensely.