New Delhi: As the ‘unhappy’ Gujarat Congress legislator Alpesh Thakor keeps everyone guessing about his next move, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has said it is “cautiously confident” of the prominent OBC leader “joining by Friday”.
Congress too is confident that this will not happen.
Highly placed sources in the BJP said Thakor — who has been expressing anger at “his people being sidelined by the Gujarat Congress” — is in “extremely advanced stages of negotiations” with the party.
Thakor is expected to join before the announcement of the Lok Sabha poll dates, said BJP sources.
“We are hopeful and, in fact, cautiously confident Alpesh Thakor will join in a day or so, by Friday — before the announcement of poll dates. Talks have been on for a while now,” said a highly placed source in the BJP who did not wish to be identified.
Lok Sabha elections are expected to be notified by the end of this week. Speculation has been rife about not just Thakor, but a few other Congress MLAs being in talks with the BJP.
ThePrint reached Thakor for comment but there was no response till the time of publishing this report. It will be updated when he responds.
Also read: Gujarat Congress sidelining my people, high command doing nothing: Alpesh Thakor
‘All rumours’
The Congress, meanwhile, has claimed that “these are all rumours”.
“We spoke to Thakor as well as the other MLAs today. They have clarified there is no such thing happening. That they are leaving the Congress and joining BJP are all rumours,” said Amit Chavda, president of the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee.
“In fact, it is the local media spreading these and that is what these MLAs have also said. There is no such thing happening at all,” Chavda told ThePrint.
Thakor, meanwhile, has called an urgent meeting of his outfit, the Gujarat Kshatriya Thakor Sena (GKTS).
The OBC leader has been alleging that “his community and people are being ignored” and the party high command has done nothing despite this being conveyed to it.
Thakor, who shot to prominence in 2015 and joined the Congress in the run-up to the 2017 Gujarat elections, has had a turbulent equation with the BJP.
In October last year, the BJP had blamed GKTS for the violence against migrants in the state that led to a mass exodus from the state and Thakor, in turn, had alleged the BJP wanted to do “a political encounter” on him.
Also read: BJP wants to do a political encounter on me, says Alpesh Thakor