Exactly two years after he was suspended from the Congress, former foreign minister Natwar Singh is likely to join the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on Saturday.
Natwar, once considered a close aide and family friend of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, is expected to make the announcement in presence of UP Chief Minister Mayawati at the BSP national convention in Lucknow.
Indications that he might join the BSP came last month when his son and former Youth Congress leader, Jagat Singh, joined the party.
“Mayawati has even offered him a ticket for Mathura Lok Sabha seat,” sources close to him said, confirming he was in Lucknow to attend the BSP convention.
Before the intimacy with the BSP, Natwar had campaigned for the Samajwadi Party in the UP assembly polls last year. And for the presidential election, he had backed NDA’s candidate Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.
Natwar was suspended from the Congress party’s primary membership on August 8, 2006, after a government-appointed panel indicted him for “misusing his position in the Congress to secure oil contracts for his son’s friends in oil-for-food programme in Iraq”. He had to quit as foreign minister in November 2005.