15 NCP leaders move to Congress

VADODARA: At a time when senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leaders are still chalking out seat-sharing agreement with Congress ahead of Gujarat assembly polls, junior rung leaders have already begun shifting sides. Fifteen NCP leaders from the city including party general secretary and vice-president joined the Congress on Monday. The NCP leaders claimed that over 200 party workers would join the Congress in coming days.The NCP leaders joined Congress in presence of Congress city president Narendra Rawat and leader of opposition in Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) Chinnam Gandhi. "We have decided to join Congress to serve people in better way. But we don't have anything against NCP. Both Congress and NCP are part of one family so we are just leaving one family to join other," said Dipesh Jain, vice-president, NCP, Vadodara. tnn
When asked why there is mass exodus from NCP to Congress, Jain told TOI, "We have always been fighting for civic amenities for people and we thought we could serve citizens better through Congress. We didn't have any squabble with NCP." However, he couldn't explain why exactly so many NCP workers were keen to join Congress.
"Many more NCP leaders will join our party in coming days. We have organized a public gathering in the city on November 2 that will be attended by our senior leaders. A large number of NCP men would join us on that day as well," said Rawat.
Some of the prominent NCP leaders who joined Congress are general secretary Nishant Raval, vice-president, Dipesh Jain, youth morcha chief, Bhagirathsinh Parmar and head of miniroty cell, Sajid Badami.