Rakesh will not join the BJP formally to prevent action under the anti-defection law, it is believed. Rakesh will not join the BJP formally to prevent action under the anti-defection law, it is believed.

In what is seen as a blow for the Congress in Sonia Gandhi’s Parliamentary constituency Rae Bareli, with less than a year to go for the Lok Sabha elections, senior party leader and second-time MLC Dinesh Pratap Singh and his brother Awadesh Singh, a Zila Panchayat chairman in Rae Bareli, are set to join the BJP.

Their youngest brother Rakesh Singh, the Congress MLA from Harchandpur in Rae Bareli district, will not join the ruling party at the same venue, Dinesh said, but the MLA has already clarified that he is “not part” of the Congress any longer.

Confirming the development, Dinesh told The Indian Express, “I will join the BJP with Awadhesh on April 21 in the presence of BJP president Amit Shah, the Uttar Pradesh party president, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the deputy CMs and other ministers.”

Rakesh will not join the BJP formally to prevent action under the anti-defection law, it is believed. The three have cited neglect by the party’s top leadership, even after they have consistently won from their seats, for their exit.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi were in Rae Bareli on Tuesday and Wednesday and attended several programmes.

Dinesh, who is organising the venue for the BJP’s public meeting this Saturday at the GIC ground in Rae Bareli, was elected to the UP Legislative Council from the local body quota in 2016 for the second consecutive term. His constituency covers 18 blocks of Rae Bareli and Amethi districts.

Dinesh said he will “expose” the truth about Amethi and Rae Bareli at Saturday’s public meeting — held as Congress pocket boroughs, the two Parliamentary constituencies are represented by Rahul and Sonia, respectively. Refusing to give details of his “exposé” now, Dinesh said he will also travel to Karnataka in the run-up to next month’s Assembly elections and tell the people about the reality of these two seats represented by the Congress’s top two leaders.

The exit of the brothers would be a cause of concern for the party not just in the district but even at the state-level, where the party will be left with a near-clean slate. It would mean the Congress would no longer have any zila panchayat chairman in UP, and have only one MLC (Deepak Singh) out of 100 members of the Vidhan Parishan, and six of 403 MLAs in the Vidhan Sabha.

Asked why he left the Congress, Dinesh said, “We won the seat from Soniaji’s constituency even at a time when a BJP candidate from local body quota lost the Legislative Council elections from the Prime Minister’s Lok Sabha constituency, Varanasi. We won the only zila panchayat seat, and an MLA seat… I always brought prestige to the party and Sonia-ji by winning elections here —- even in tough times for the party. But her (Sonia’s) people underestimated and insulted me.”

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