After resigning from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a day earlier, prominent Chhattisgarh tribal leader Nand Kumar Sai on Monday joined the ruling Congress ahead of assembly elections in the state.
Sai took membership of the Congress in the presence of Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and PCC chief Mohan Markam at the Congress office, Rajiv Bhawan.
Sai filled the Congress membership form and the Chief Minister garlanded him. Other prominent leaders of the Congress were also present.
Later addressing the media, Sai said it was a tough decision for him to quit the BJP and claimed it was no longer the party which it used to be during the regime of "Atalji and Advaniji” -- a reference to Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani.
The 77-year-old leader, a former three-term Lok Sabha member and three-time MLA, has been the BJP state president in both Chhattisgarh and undivided Madhya Pradesh. He is said to have considerable influence in tribal-dominated parts of Surguja division (northern Chhattisgarh).
“The BJP’s form has changed and it is no more what it was when he joined it at the time of Jana Sangh," he said.
“I decided to join the Congress as it has been doing good work in Chhattisgarh under the leadership of Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghelji,” Sai said.
Sai was first elected as a Janata Party MLA in 1977 from Tapkara in erstwhile Madhya Pradesh.
In 1980, he was elected as BJP’s Raigarh district unit chief. He was then elected as the BJP MLA from the same constituency in 1985 and 1998.
He was elected to the Lok Sabha from Raigarh in 1989, 1996 and 2004 and to the Rajya Sabha in 2009 and 2010.
Sai was the BJP chief of undivided Madhya Pradesh from 1997 to 2000 and the Chhattisgarh BJP chief in 2003-05.
He was the first leader of the opposition in the Chhattisgarh Assembly after the state came into being in November 2000.