Gujarat: Nitin Patel joins BJP; Balkrishna Patel moves to Congress

Nitin had contested the 2017 assembly elections from the Naranpura constituency as a Congress candidate. “This is not my entry into BJP from Congress. It is my ghar wapsi. Not many people know that during the time of the Babri mosque demolition, I was 17 years old and my elder brother had got a BJP ticket in the (municipal) corporation elections… I had a pro-BJP mindset from the time I voted for the first time,” Nitin said after joining the BJP.

“In 2005, a Congress leader asked me to join the party saying it required a dynamic leader like him and I got strayed. I have no enmity with any leader of the Congress… but now, the Congress has no vision,” Nitin added.

After the Supreme Court verdict on Ram mandir, he said, he had suggested some leaders of the Congress to do some campaign and collect bricks for the temple but failed to get any response.

Balkrishna joined the Congress in the presence of Thakor and Gujarat Congress’s former president Siddharth Patel. The Congress is welcoming “BJP’s grassroot worker and tall leader Balkrishna” to the party, an official release quoted Thakor as saying.

Quoting Balkrishna, release stated, “As a (Vadodara) district president, I had got BJP victorious in the district panchayat and taluka panchayat, while also discharging services as the Dabhoi MLA. In BJP, grassroot workers are being continuously ignored and injustice is being done to farmers.”