Former BJP head of the Sujanpur block Rakesh Thakur joins the Congress

Rakesh Thakur, a prominent BJP leader and former president of the Sujanpur BJP, switched his allegiance to the Congress today, amid a moment when the majority of politicians are gravitating towards the BJP. As the chairman of the Zila Parishad here, Rakesh Thakur continued to be the previous chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal’s right hand.

In a public statement, he said that the BJP leaders had not only disregarded the workers’ feelings but also made fun of them in the constituency. He added that in the Assembly elections, fourteen months before, the BJP was supporting Rajinder Rana as a Congress candidate from Sujanpur, but the same BJP has now selected him as its nominee.

After Rajinder Rana joined the BJP, Thakur said that the BJP’s Sujanpur unit was split and that the party’s members were demoralized. He said that Rajinder Rana had a habit of regularly quitting the position he had previously held and had frequently messed with people’s emotions. He added that after being elected to the Vidhan Sabha in 2012, Rana had resigned to run for the Lok Sabha in 2014 as a candidate for the Congress, and that he has since betrayed the Congress party once again in order to fulfill his desire to hold political power. He claimed that while Rana was only trying to deceive people and win them over, his accusations of inadequate development in the Sujanpur area would not succeed in his goals.

Rakesh Thakur, in the meanwhile, promised that Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu will get a thunderous greeting upon his arrival in Hamirpur. He predicted that the Congress will win the Lok Sabha elections and all six Assembly by-elections with enormous majorities, saying that voters would cast ballots in the chief minister’s name.

As a Congress candidate in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Rana was unsuccessful. Owing to his allegiance to the former Chief Minister, Virbhadra Singh, he was selected as the State Disaster Management Authority’s Vice-Chairman. He was elected as a Congress candidate from Sujanpur in 2017 and again in 2022. Due to his cross-voting during the Rajya Sabha elections, he was ejected from the Vidhan Sabha on February 28 and subsequently joined the BJP.