Ex-Gujarat CM Shankersinh Vaghela's son in talks to join BJP

With the assembly election inching closer, the ruling BJP is emerging as the favourite destination for a number of Congress leaders and other party leaders.

If sources are to be believed, Mahendrasinh Vaghela, son of former Gujarat chief minister and former union minister Shankersinh Vaghela is in talks with the BJP and may join the party ahead of the polls.

Vaghela had earlier joined the BJP in July 2018 but resigned from the party in October that year. Most of Vaghela’s supporters, who were in the Congress had shifted sides to the BJP following the Rajya Sabha elections in 2017 after voting for the BJP candidates. Vaghela, against his father’s wishes, joined the BJP later only to tender resignation within three months.


However, speculations are rife that he may be knocking on the BJP’s doors again this year after he met Union Home Minister Amit Shah when Shah visited the state recently. Political observers believe that Mahendrasinh doesn’t have too many options left before him to ensure his political survival.

A number of senior district-level Congress workers from the party’s citadel Kheda district had joined BJP on Monday. These workers were known to be close to former GPCC president and former Union minister Bharatsinh Solanki. However, after Solanki announced a temporary break from public life in June this year, his supporters are now flocking to BJP, maintained a source in the BJP.

Solanki had announced his political sabbatical in June after a video of his wife assaulting a young girl for being with him, went viral. Maintaining that the video would cause Congress trouble in the upcoming elections, Solanki had announced that he would keep off public life for a while.