Uttarakhand: Congress MLA Rajendra Singh Bhandari Joins BJP

Uttarakhand Congress MLA Rajendra Singh Bhandari joined the BJP here on Sunday, in a setback to the grand-old party ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

Bhandari, a three-term Congress legislator who was also a minister in the state in the past, joined the BJP in the presence of its senior leaders, including Union Minister Piyush Goyal and the party's national general secretary Dushyant Kumar Gautam.

Gautam is also the BJP's in-charge for Uttarakhand.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and BJP chief spokesperson Anil Baluni, a Rajya Sabha member who will contest his first Lok Sabha election from the Garhwal seat in Uttarakhand, were also present on the occasion.

Bhandari, who is learnt to have resigned from the Congress before joining the BJP, represented the Badrinath seat in the Uttarakhand Assembly. He won the seat by defeating the BJP's Uttarakhand unit chief Mahendra Bhatt by a small margin in the Assembly polls held in 2022.

Badrinath is one of the 14 assembly segments which falls under the Garhwal Lok Sabha constituency from where the BJP's Anil Baluni will contest the parliamentary election this time. Of these 14 assembly segments, Badrinath is the only seat which is with the Congress. The rest are with the BJP.

Addressing a press conference with the BJP leaders here, Bhandari said that he decided to join the ruling party after being impressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership and the work done by his government for the country's progress in the last 10 years.

"I am so much impressed with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's policy for the welfare of the poor people. Under his leadership, a continuous journey of development is going on across the country. I want to contribute to making India a developed country by 2047, a goal set by Prime Minister Modi," he told reporters at the BJP headquarters.