RANCHI: Jharkhand’s first CM Babulal Marandi returned to BJP after 14 years on Monday when he merged his outfit, Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik), with the saffron party in the presence of Union home minister Amit Shah and former CMs Raghubar Das and Arjun Munda .

Soon after Marandi joined BJP in Ranchi, the remaining two legislators of the three-member JVM-P legislature party, Pradeep Yadav and Bandhu Tirkey , joined Congress at AICC headquarters in Delhi.

“In 2006, when I left home (BJP), I did not go anywhere. I was exploring different avenues in the state, trying to fight for the cause of its people. I covered about seven lakh km in these years. Today, I am back home,” Marandi said. He said after he lost the parliamentary and assembly polls in 2014, Shah wanted him to return to BJP. “Rajya Sabha polls were to take place in Jharkhand in 2015, but I refused as I did not want to join the party just because I had lost the polls. BJP never stopped trying to bring me back. During the 2019 elections, BJP national vice-president Om Mathur again tried to persuade me to return. It took me some time to convince myself for a ghar wapasi,” he said.

Shah, who was on his first visit to Jharkhand after the electoral defeat in December, assured Marandi that he will get a respectable role in BJP. “I want to assure him that a person of his stature will remain an asset for the party. No one will ever treat him as an outsider. He will be given a respectable role and responsibility to revive BJP, the way it was in 2000 when the state was formed,” he said. In Delhi, AICC Jharkhand in charge RPN Singh said the majority in the JVM(P) legislature party had joined Congress.

