Gujarat AAP leader inducted 6 months ago exits party, returns to Congress
Indranil Rajguru was inducted into the AAP in April this year and was hoping to be the presumptive chief minister, Gujarat AAP chief Gopal Italia said
Indranil Rajguru, the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) general secretary from Gujarat, on Friday resigned from the party and returned to the Congress hours after AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal named Isudan Gadhvi as the AAP’s presumptive chief minister for the Gujarat elections.
Rajguru, a Rajkot-based realtor, was one of the few AAP leaders in Gujarat who had contested and won assembly elections in the past.
Rajguru won the Rajkot-East assembly seat in the 2012 elections. In 2017, he was pitted by the Congress to contest from the Rajkot-West seat against the then chief minister Vijay Rupani. Rajguru eventually lost the election to Rupani who received 61% votes.
A year later, Rajguru resigned from the Congress, saying he was unhappy with the way the party was being run but returned in 2019 and also campaigned for the Congress candidates during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Gujarat AAP president Gopal Italia linked Rajguru ‘s exit to the party naming Gadhvi as the presumptive chief minister. Italia said he wanted to be the chief ministerial face of the party and had been trying to pressurise the party.
“AAP had decided that the people of Gujarat will choose the party’s CM face for Gujarat and they chose Gadhavi. As a result, Rajguru has taken this decision. Also, he wanted to decide candidates for 15 constituencies for which he was pressurizing the party,” Italia added.
Kejriwal, who announced Rajguru ’s name on Friday, said he secured 73% of the votes cast over phone in an exercise carried out by the party to allow people to pick its chief ministerial candidate.
The Congress announced Indranil Rajguru’s return within hours. “We were always with Congress, even my family didn’t approve when I quit. I had joined AAP to defeat BJP but felt that they mislead people just like BJP,” he said at a Congress event to announce his homecoming, according to news agency ANI.