Soon after joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), former Samajwadi Party spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia today hailed the saffron party’s leadership and asserted that it would be an honour for him to serve the party.
“The BJP is a huge platform where I can serve the nation in a much better way. It’ll be my contribution towards the establishment of a new India under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It will be an honour for me,” Bhatia told the media here.
“The BJP is a place where efficiency, allegiance and integrity are not overlooked,” he added while firing a salvo at the Samajwadi Party.
Bhatia also heaped praises on Prime Minister Modi citing he was in awe of him even when he was not in the BJP.
“I was in awe of his personality and the way he functions even when I was in the Samajwadi Party. His vision has given a new direction to India,” he said.
Bhatia also said that BJP president Amit Shah’s able leadership motivated him to take this step.
“Amit Shah’s able leadership motivated me to take the step. He told me that elections come and go, but I should join the party. He told me the BJP needs good people to run the nation, to work for them. I won’t have to compromise on my ideology, now that I have joined the BJP,” Bhatia said.
“I gave so many years to the Samajwadi Party, but now when the ‘samajwaad’ (socialism) has gone missing there, I decided to move on,” he added.
This move may come as a major disappointment to the Samajwadi Party as it comes just days after its dismal show in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections where it lost power to the BJP.
Bhatia resigned from the post of national president legal wing and all other posts in the Samajwadi Party just five days before the assembly elections in the state.
Confirming to ANI, Bhatia had informed that he did not want to reveal why he took the decision, however, adding he had forwarded his resignation to party patriarch Mulayam Yadav and then Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.
Bhatia, who was an active member of the Samajwadi Party for more than a decade, had mentioned in his Facebook post that it had become hard for him to continue serving the party when it was compromising the very principles of democracy, secularism and socialism that he had always believed in.
Bhatia, who is a senior lawyer and currently holds the position of general secretary of Supreme Court Bar Association, had also asserted that his decision was firmly entrenched in his principles of democracy and socialism.
The rift between Bhatia and the Samajwadi Party top brass developed after he was removed from the post of Additional Advocate General (AAG) in March 2016.
Last month, former Congress leader and senior politician S.M. Krishna joined the BJP citing ideological differences with the party leadership.
