NAGPUR, February 5: The Congress today received a shot in the arm when Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member of the dissolved Lok Sabha Banwarilal Purohit rejoined the party. He was welcomed in the party by Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee president Ranjit Deshmukh and senior Congress leader and former union minister N K P Salve at a news conference jointly addressed by them here.Purohit, who was elected to the Lok Sabha from Nagpur constituency on the BJP ticket in 1996, was denied ticket this time following fierce opposition from BJP general secretary Pramod Mahajan and his supporters in Maharashtra. He subsequently resigned from the BJP. He ended the suspense over his future plan by returning to the Congress.
After being Congress member of Lok Sabha twice, Purohit had resigned from the party and joined the BJP in 1991. Purohit, who owns the local English daily The Hitavada, said both Salve and Deshmukh wrote a letter and personally met him requesting him to join the Congress.
``I amgrateful to them for facilitating my home-coming,'' he remarked. He said he would work for the success of the candidates of the Congress-Republican Party alliance in the state.
Recalling the events leading to his exit from the BJP, Purohit said he had been penalised by the party's leaders for exposing corruption of some BJP leaders in leasing coal mines near the ordnance factory to a company of the Nippon Ispat limited of the Mittal group in Chandrapur district. He said Mahajan had threatened him for doing this and ultimately succeeded in denying him a re-nomination for the Lok Sabha.
Even Vajpayee who mediated in the dispute and promised him honourable treatment, found himself helpless before Mahajan whom he described as a fund-raiser of the BJP, he claimed.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
