MUMBAI, November 21: Former Gujarat Chief Minister Shankar Sinh Vaghela, who officially launched the Rashtriya Janata Party in Maharashtra today, invited Congress members to join his party.Vaghela, who arrived in the city this morning, inducted four disgruntled members of the Bharatiya Janata Party into his fold and organised them into a convenors' committee to look into party affairs in Mumbai and the state.The four RJP members in the city include Madho Deolekar, Vamanrao Parab, Arjun Vankhede and Ganapatrao Katbe. All of them are former members of the Maharashtra legislative assembly.Of the four new RJP members, Deolekar was in the forefront of the dissident group in the state BJP unit.He had locked horns with the BJP general secretary Pramod Mahajan and young leadership of the state, accusing it of bringing a `cellphone culture' into the BJP. The confrontation had ended with both leaders trading charges against each other and the BJP completely marginalising, to the extent of ignoring, Deolekar.Deolekar's proximity to Vaghela had come to the fore at the height of political crisis in Gujarat in 1995, when the former had campaigned against the then BJP government.Addressing a press conference, Vaghela said he would welcome any Congress worker who would like to join the RJP. In the same breath however, he thanked the Congress Party for supporting its government for one year and was open to inducting them into the RJP government led by Dilip Parikh.He said his party was not averse to having an alliance with the Congress for the next assembly elections in Gujarat. ``But let the proposal come from the Congress side,'' he addedIn the event of a mid-term poll for the Lok Sabha, Vaghela said his party intends to field about 100 candidates throughout the country. He was confident that in the next Lok Sabha, the RJP would have as many as 20 members from Gujarat.He claimed that there were 20 sitting MLAs in Maharashtra from different parties, including the BJP, with him. However, he refused to identify them. ``I don't want to disturb them at this point,'' he said. Speaking on Gujarat, Vaghela said his party's government was doing fine in the state, and the state ministry would most probably be expanded next week.Mounting a frontal attack on the BJP, the former chief minister said the party was a divided house with certain forces aligning against former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. This was one of the reasons why the party failed to muster support for its short-lived government. After its successful horse trading in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP was now set to attempt a similar exercise at the centre, he alleged.
