Expelled Janta Congress Chhattisgarh (J) MLA Dharmjeet Singh joins BJP

Dharmjeet Singh was expelled from the JCC (J) in September last year after the party accused him of disregarding the interests of the marginalised communities such as SCs, STs, and OBCs

Don't want to miss the best from Business Standard?

Legislator Dharmjeet Singh, who was expelled from the Janta Congress Chhattisgarh (J) last year, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Raipur on Sunday.

This development comes at a time when the state is due for Assembly elections this year.

Former Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer S S D Badgaiya also joined the BJP during an event at the Kushabhau Thakre Parisar, the state headquarters of the BJP in Raipur.

During the event, BJP state party president Arun Sao welcomed both Singh and Badgaiya into the party and said that the party’s expanding reach is evidence of a wind of change in Chhattisgarh’s political landscape.

Sao said that the people of Chhattisgarh were fed up with the Congress’s misrule.

“We all will work together to save Chhattisgarh”, he added.

Union Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, who is also the BJP’s joint in-charge for the Chhattisgarh Assembly elections, and former chief minister Raman Singh attended the event.

Singh, a four-term MLA from the Lormi Assembly seat, holds significant popularity within the Bilaspur division.
 

Singh started his political career after getting elected on a Congress ticket from the Lormi constituency in 1998. Subsequently, he was elected MLA in the Assembly polls of 2003 and 2008. However, he faced defeat in the 2013 election against a BJP candidate.
 

Singh later broke off with the Congress and aligned himself with former chief minister Ajit Jogi, founder of the JCC (J), in 2016.

In the 2018 Assembly elections, Singh won the Lormi seat as a candidate of the JCC (J).

However, he was expelled from the JCC (J) in September last year after the party accused him of disregarding the interests of the marginalised communities such as the Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC).