Bhopal: A day after senior BJP leader and former Minister Deepak Joshi made it clear that he was ending his association with the saffron party and would shift to the Congress soon, state Home Minister Narottam Mishra said the party was with him.
On Tuesday, responding on the issue, Narottam Mishra, who has been given the task to convince rebels to remain in the party ahead of the elections, said, “Deepak Joshi has been my cabinet colleague. He is a very able leader. He is a senior party leader and we all are with him.”
Mishra said he has learned politics from Joshi’s father late Kailash Chandra Joshi, who served as the Chief Minister (1977-1978) of Madhya Pradesh. After the former CM died in 2019, his son Deepak Joshi was elected as an MLA from Bagli (2003), the constituency his father represented for years.
Later, Bagli seat was reserved for Scheduled Caste (ST) and Joshi contested three elections from neighbouring Assembly constituency, Hatpipliya and won twice in 2008 and 2013. Joshi lost the Assembly election 2018 and since then he was sidelined from the party, as he claimed.
Sources said after Joshi had made his decision to shift to the Congress, a section of senior BJP leaders were planning to reach out to him soon. Sources also said the BJP leaders would try to convince him to change his mind and to remain with the party.
If the BJP leader, a three-time MLA Deepak Joshi joins the Congress, it would be seen as a major setback to the ruling outfit in the state, where Assembly polls are due by the year-end.
Talking to IANS on Monday, Joshi said that he will meet the Congress president, Kamal Nath on May 6. “The legacy of my father was honesty. I had flagged various issues related to corruption in development of the Bagli Assembly constituency (once represented by him), but no action was taken on those matters.”
“I will take forward the legacy of my father, who was known for his honesty,” Joshi told IANS.
(IANS)
