Arvinder Singh Lovely, former Delhi Congress chief, along with other former Congress leaders join BJP

Delhi Congress leader Arvinder Singh Lovely joins BJP citing unilateral decisions and issues with AAP alliance.

Former Delhi Congress president Arvinder Singh Lovely joined the BJP on May 4 along with former city government minister Raj Kumar Chauhan and former MLAs Neeraj Basoya and Naseeb Singh.

All the former Congress leaders slammed the party’s alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi for the Lok Sabha polls as they joined the BJP in the presence of Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri and party general secretary Vinod Tawde.

Mr. Lovely hailed the BJP leadership, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for giving him and his colleagues the opportunity to join the party when they felt lost. He asserted that Modi is set to retain power with a big majority in the ongoing Lok Sabha polls.

This will be the second time Mr. Lovely has joined the BJP. He left it to rejoin the Congress in 2018 following a brief stay in the saffron party.

Mr. Puri praised these leaders and said the BJP will utilise their services effectively.

Mr. Lovely resigned as the Delhi Congress president on April 28 saying that he had found himself “handicapped and unable to continue” as all unanimous decisions taken by the Delhi Congress have been unilaterally vetoed by the AICC general secretary (Delhi In-charge) Deepak Babaria. At that time, Mr. Lovely said that he was only resigning from his post and not quitting the party.

In his letter to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Mr. Lovely pointed out that the Delhi unit was against an alliance with the AAP which was formed on the “sole basis of levelling false, fabricated and mala fide corruption charges” against the Congress party. He noted that the State unit fell in line with the party’s decision.