BJP national chief Amit Shah on Saturday poached an important tribal leader back from the Congress in election-bound Chhattisgarh, hoping to counter years of accumulated anti-incumbency as the ruling party seeks a fourth term on the trot.

The Congress played down state unit working president Ramdayal Uike’s defection, dubbing the MLA an “opportunist”.

“Uike has gone back to the BJP, which he had left earlier for opportunistic reasons. He has again proved that he is an opportunist,” Shailesh Nitin Trivedi, chief of the state Congress’s communications wing, told PTI.

Uike joined the BJP in Bilaspur in the presence of Shah, who was in Chhattisgarh to gear up the party organisation for the phased Assembly polls on November 12 and 20.

“I had been feeling suffocated in the Congress for the last several years. The Congress has diverted from its ideology and principles,” Uike said, calling his return to the BJP “ghar wapsi” (homecoming). Uike had quit the BJP in 2000, the year Chhattisgarh was carved out as a new state from Madhya Pradesh.

BSP chief Mayawati had earlier dumped the Congress and aligned with another tribal leader, Ajit Jogi.