Patidar leader Hardik Patel joined the BJP on Thursday, days after quitting the Congress.
He was welcomed in the party by BJP Gujarat unit president C R Patil and former deputy chief minister Nitin Patel.
"Today, I am going to start a new chapter keeping in mind the interests of the nation, region, society and community. I will work as a small soldier in the development work of the nation being carried out under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi," Hardik tweeted earlier on Thursday.
Hardik (28) who led the Patidar quota agitation in 2015, joined the Congress in 2019.
He resigned from that party on May 18, after claiming in a letter to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi that the party "only played to the role of a roadblock" over certain key issues in the country and was "merely reduced to opposing everything".
Patel first came into limelight in 2015 when he spearheaded the movement demanding reservation for the Patidar community in government jobs and educational institutes. Although he joined the opposition Congress in March 2019 ahead of the Lok Sabha election, contesting the parliamentary election was not possible for him due to his conviction in a rioting case.
He positioned himself as a vocal critic of the BJP and kept targeting the party and its governments in the state and at the Centre for being "anti-poor, anti-farmer and anti-youth".
