Six senior BJP leaders have joined the Congress in Uttarakhand a year before Assembly elections, and days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to visit the state to inaugurate an expressway.
State Congress chief Ganesh Godyal has claimed that more than a dozen other ruling party leaders will join his party before the 2027 elections.
The half-dozen BJP leaders who joined the Congress in New Delhi on Saturday expressed their annoyance with the Pushkar Singh Dhami government and pledged not to let the BJP return to power in the hill state next year.
These BJP leaders include former MLAs Raj Kumar Thukral and Bhimlal Arya, former Roorkee mayor Gaurav Goyal, former Bhimtal block pramukh Lakhan Singh and former Mussoorie nagar palika president Anuj Gupta.
“We are fed up with the corruption under BJP rule in the state. The Congress is very strong here and can easily overthrow the Dhami government in 2027,” Arya said.
Congress leader Pritam Singh said: “The people of Uttarakhand are unhappy with the BJP government, which has protected the killers of a receptionist in Rishikesh. Law and order is in a shambles; there’s anarchy all over the state.”
Pulkit Arya, son of now suspended BJP leader Vinod Arya, and two aides are serving life sentences for murdering a 19-year-old receptionist at the Aryas’ resort in 2022. She was apparently killed for refusing to provide “special services” to a “VIP”, whose name the police have not revealed.
Dhami put up a brave face, saying: “Those who have joined the Congress keep moving from party to party.”
Dhami had met Modi a few days ago and invited him to inaugurate the Dehradun-New Delhi elevated expressway sometime in early April. The PMO has yet to fix the date but the state government has begun the preparations.
State BJP chief Mahendra Bhatt said: “People suspended from the BJP in the past have joined the Congress. They are discarded goods. The Congress has inducted them because it doesn’t have candidates for the Assembly elections.”
A veteran journalist from the state who didn’t want to be named said the defections were “definitely a jolt to the BJP ahead of Modi’s visit”.
“The Congress appears in a better position than the BJP because of poor law and order and the reckless cutting of forests in the name of development. The receptionist’s murder is still fresh in the mind of the people, who know the ‘VIP’ involved belongs to the BJP,” the journalist said.
“But let’s see how the Congress contains the anger of its own leaders, who are not happy with the new members. The BJP, on the other hand, has begun training programmes for its workers from today (Sunday) to prevent any further defections.”
The journalist added: “Take, for example, Meena Sharma, the former Rudrapur nagar palika president who has reacted against Thukral’s entry into the Congress. There is no dearth of candidates in the Congress, and so it cannot field all those joining the party. It will be interesting to see how it handles the situation.”
Sharma has publicly said: “Thukral has been extremely critical of me and my family. It’s difficult for me to accept such a leader in the Congress.”
Narayan Pal, former Bahujan Samaj Party MLA, too
has joined the Congress in
Uttarakhand.
