Gandhinagar: The eternal rebel of Gujarat, Shankersinh Vaghela joined the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in the presence of party leaders Sharad Pawar and Praful Patel and was immediately appointed its national general secretary in Ahmedabad on Tuesday.
“We are in the process of forging a national coalition to replace the BJP government at the Centre after the ensuing polls and when he expressed his desire to join, we asked him to take on the work of the national general secretary towards taking forward this objective. His experience will be an asset,” party supremo Pawar said. The NCP chief said that talks with the Congress for a possible tie-up for the ensuing Lok Sabha elections was a work in progress.
Speaking on the occasion, Vaghela said that he would devote himself wholeheartedly to the task of making a non-BJP – UPA-III – government a reality at the centre after this year’s parliamentary elections.
Though long speculated, his formal joining of the NCP on Tuesday brings him back into the political mainstream after a long hiatus.
In 2017, Vaghela had quit the Congress along with a dozen legislators after the party failed to nominate him the chief ministerial candidate. Later, for the second time, he floated his own regional set up – Janvikalp Party and put up candidates on a symbol of a Rajasthan based political outfit but came a cropper with most of his candidates even losing their deposit. Earlier, his first effort at forming a regional party, RJP in 1996 had also bombed.
