Published On : Fri, Sep 26th, 2014

Sunil Deshmukh, Anil Bonde of Congress join BJP, certain to bag tickets for Assembly polls

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Nitin Gadkari, Sunil Deshmukh, Anil Bobde

Nagpur: The break-up of Sena-BJP and Congress-NCP alliances has come as blessing in disguise for those leaders who were sulking for one reason or the other and were planning to drift toward other prosperous parties for tickets in Assembly election. The leaders have started dumping their parent parties.

On Friday, a former Minister in Maharashtra cabinet and one of the popular MLAs of Vidarbha, Dr Sunil Deshmukh of Amravati, who was denied Congress ticket in the last Assembly elections to accommodate Raosaheb Shekhawat, son of the then President of India, Pratibha Patil, has defected to BJP and is sure to contest the elections from Amravati as its official candidate.

Along with him, the other Congress leader who jumped the fence, was Dr. Anil Bonde of Morshi. Dr Bonde, who has also been in Congress and been active in electoral politics since the past few decades, has quite a following in Warud, Morshi and Amravati. He will most certainly be the official BJP candidate from Morshi though his entry has ruffled the feathers of some local BJP workers who have been loyal cadre of the party for a long time.

Gadkari & Mudliar
Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari welcomed them to the party fold and reaffirmed that the Bharatiya Janata Party will, without doubt, sweep the state elections. “The party will be in a position to form the Government without any allies, though it will contest with some smaller parties who have been with them for some time,” asserted Gadkari.

The State BJP President Devendra Fadnavi, who addressed a press conference in Nagpur earlier after filling his papers, could not be present to welcome the new entrants to the party since he had to rush to Mumbai.