NEW DELHI: BJP has decided to induct Janata Dal leader Subramanian Swamy into the party. The decision has been formalized at the party's parliamentary board meeting on Thursday, July 4, 2013, with Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi proposing the move and most leaders including party veteran L K Advani supporting it.

Party chief Rajnath Singh however prefers to wait for his predecessor and former party chief Nitin Gadkari , who is abroaf at present, to be back on July 8, before taking a final call on the matter. Singh is learnt to have told the parliamentary board on Thursday that one should finalise the matter after Gadkari's return. It was during Gadkari's regime that Swamy's Janata Dal had joined the NDA, about a year ago, but Swamy has been keen to merge with the BJP for a while.

Swamy has had his cleared from the RSS for over a month now and many in BJP have been in favour of including him in the party fold. But many senior BJP leaders have not been in agreement with Swamy's extreme politics against Congress and its first family, the Gandhis, and his "maverick" ways. Hence even when he was being considered for being included in the NDA family, there were some serious objections initially to the move from BJP quarters. However, Swamy's close links to the Sangh Parivar helped him in first joining the NDA and now BJP.

The common cause that BJP and Swamy seems to have is the fight against the cases of corruption involving the UPA government and its array of ministers. Swamy, the only face of his party, has been successfully pursuing cases against finance minister P Chidambaram in the courts, specially in connection with the 2G Spectrum scam and has hence been in the limelight in the recent years. With BJP too campaigning hard against the government's cases of corruption including 2G, Coalgate and other scams there seem to be enough in common between Swamy and BJP's agenda at present. When Modi brought up the issue of Swamy's intent to join BJP, at the parliamenatary board meeting on Thursday, the Gujarat CM mentioned that Swamy has been fighting against the UPA's corruption and his plank was the same as that of BJP and hence it would make sense to include him in the party.

With Lok Sabha elections less than a year away, and the "UPA's corruption" being BJP's main poll plank against the Congress, the party leadership seems to have agreed to allow Swany into its fold, but apprehensions about whether he will stick to the party lines remain, considering BJP has more than once burnt its fingers with another "maverick" lawyer Ram Jethmalani , who had to be expelled from the party recently.

A senior BJP leader had said when Swamy was joining the NDA, "there were similar objections on re-inducting Ram Jethmalani into Rajya Sabha on a BJP ticket, as he is also known for his maverick ways and hence does not toe the party line on many occasions. The apprehensions about Swamy are on the same lines, though his is a case of joining the NDA and not BJP". But this time Swamy is set to join BJP.