JAMSHEDPUR: With Lok Sabha elections inching closer, the migration of politicians from one party to another has started again. Shailendra Mahato and his wife Abha Mahato , both former parliamentarians, have left BJP and joined the Congress The couple had met the Congress president, Rahul Gandhi, and state in-charge of the Congress, R P N Singh, in New Delhi on February 27 and took membership of the party.“Shailendra ji and Abha ji took the membership of the party on Wednesday itself but keeping the tension at the border and the subsequent developments over wing commander Abhinandan Varthaman in mind, we refrained from making any political comment,” said the state Congress president, Ajay Kumar, on Thursday. He said that the Mahato couple will be present on the dais during Rahul Gandhi’s forthcoming rally here on March 2.Shailendra Mahato won the Jamshedpur Lok Sabha seat twice on a JMM ticket. Once the face of the Kurmi community in the state, Shailendra Mahato defeated his nearest rival, Chandan Bagchi, then a top Congress leader, in the 1989 and 1991 general elections. But Shailendra lost the seat to BJP’s Nitish Bharadwaj in 1996.Shailendra Mahato was accused in the JMM MPs bribery case, which hit the Congress government of Narasimha Rao hard, but later he turned approver and subsequently joined the BJP. Abha Mahato won from the same constituency in 1998 and 1999 on a BJP ticket. She defeated ex-CMD of Tata Steel, Rusy Mody, in 1998 and Congress’s Ghansyam Mahato in 1999, but lost to JMM’s Sunil Mahato in 2004 .“The present (national) leadership of the BJP apparently deemed us incompetent, hence they did not involve us in party organization work. Therefore, we decided to quit BJP and join Congress,” said Shailendra Mahato.Incidentally, in 2009, the couple had left the saffron party, only to return in 2013.

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