Unhappy with tussle in Congress, Jat leader Subhash Maharia rejoins BJP

“The Congress government has utterly failed on all fronts.”

In a setback to the ruling Congress in Rajasthan ahead of this year’s Assembly election, former Union Minister and a prominent Jat leader of the Shekhawati region, Subhash Maharia, rejoined the BJP here on Friday.

Mr. Maharia had won thrice from the Sikar Lok Sabha constituency— in 1998, 1999 and 2004— and had joined the Congress in 2016.

Mr. Maharia, 65, who joined the BJP at the party’s State headquarters in the presence of senior leaders Arun Singh, C.P. Joshi and Rajendra Rathore, said the ongoing tussle between Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and his former deputy Sachin Pilot had led to “unprecedented corruption” in the State government.

“The Congress government has utterly failed on all fronts. The people have made up their mind to bring the BJP back to power,” he said.

Mr. Maharia had served as the Union Minister of State for Rural Development in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government from 1999 to 2004. After he faced defeat in the 2009 Lok Sabha election, the BJP did not give him a ticket in 2014.

In the 2019 general election, he contested from Sikar as a Congress candidate and lost to BJP’s Sumedhan and Saraswati.

While affirming that he was happy to have returned to the BJP’s fold, Mr. Maharia said the Congress government had failed to fulfil its promises, while the future of thousands of youth had been destroyed by the question paper leaks in the government recruitment examination.