Terming the BJP \u2018anti-Dalit\u2019, disgruntled BJP MP from northwest Delhi Udit Raj joined the Congress today after being denied a ticket and slammed his former party, saying it wanted Dalit votes but not a leader from the community who spoke his mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI am feeling cheated by the BJP. I have told\n Rahul Gandhi that I don\u2019t want anything and will campaign in support of\n the party to defeat the BJP. I wanted to join the Congress earlier and \nGandhi knew that. If the BJP had given me the ticket, I would have \ncontested. But, with this decision, it is clear that the BJP is \nanti-Dalit,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Congress leader KC Venugopal called Raj \u201ca \ndynamic and sincere face of Indian politics\u201d. \u201cWe were in Parliament \ntogether. He fought against his own government on some of the issues \npertaining to Dalits,\u201d he said.Former Delhi CM and Congress northeast \nDelhi candidate Sheila Dikshit said she had known Raj for long and was \nnot happy when he joined the BJP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the BJP finalised its outlay\n for seven important seats of Delhi, repeating five and dropping two of \nthe sitting MPs, on the seat where it had anticipated trouble, it \ndelayed the official announcement as much as it could. Raj joins the \nlong queue of turncoats this election season to switch sides. He had \nyesterday said: \u201cI am not so hungry that I would have switched camps so \nsoon. I am a disciplined soldier. But I feel the ticket was delayed so I\n may not join another party.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As his twitter handle saw prefix \n\u2018chowkidar\u2019 disappear and then reappear later in the evening, many felt \nthat the BJP had managed to broker peace. Another sitting MP Maheish \nGirri, who was dropped to favour cricketer Gautam Gambhir, continues to \nsport \u2018chowkidar\u2019 with his name. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sources say the party had \ndecided to not give a ticket to Raj and Girri long ago. Their \u201creports\u201d \nwere not good and in the case of Raj specifically, even the RSS was \nagainst his candidature.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Terming the BJP \u2018anti-Dalit\u2019, disgruntled BJP MP from northwest Delhi Udit Raj joined the Congress today after being denied a ticket and slammed his former party, saying it wanted Dalit votes but not a leader from the community who spoke his mind. \u201cI am feeling cheated by the BJP. I have told Rahul Gandhi that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59953,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59954,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59952\/revisions\/59954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}