BJP rebel Shatrughan Sinha to join Congress today

BJP rebel Shatrughan Sinha is all scheduled to join the Congress party at 12 pm on Saturday. He will be fighting the upcoming polls from his traditional seat 'Patna Sahib'.

Sinha is a two-term BJP Lok Sabha member from Patna Sahib.

Mentioning his reasons to have quit the BJP, he slammed the party's leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah saying earlier there was "lokshahi" (democracy) and now there is "tanashahi" (dictatorship) in the party.

"There used to be collective decision during Atal (Bihari Vajpayee) ji's time. There was democracy in the true sense. But now, there is the case of one-man show and two-man army," said the 73-year-old leader, who is in Muscat where he is being honoured as a cinematic legend.

Asked why he decided to go with the Congress, Sinha said there were several reasons such as it is the grand old party which has had great leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru, and those of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

The party also has a great contribution in the country's freedom movement, the sitting MP from Patna Sahib said, adding another reason was that it is a national party in the "true sense".

He said an important factor is that the Patna Sahib seat has gone to the Congress quota in the mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) seat sharing and he had said that whatever be the situation, the constituency for him fighting the polls would be the same.

"Many people like (TMC chief) Mamata Banerjee, (SP president) Akhilesh Yadav, and (Delhi Chief Minister) Arvind Kejriwal among others, wanted me to be in their party. But I had to come to this place because I had said that whatever be the situation, the location will be the same," Sinha said, adding that the Congress was a great party.

On claims by BJP leaders that he got votes in Patna due to the party, the former Union minister said, "I would like to say that in the last election it was not just Modi 'leher' (wave) but Modi 'qahar' (destruction) on certain seats like we saw Shahnawaz Hussain losing from Bhagalpur. Arun Jaitley had a humiliating defeat."