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Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and sitting Member of Parliament (MP) from Jalandhar Sushil Kumar Rinku and incumbent Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Jalandhar west Sheetal Angural joined the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) on Wednesday.
The development comes a day after sitting MP from Ludhiana Ravneet Singh Bittu joined BJP.
Both Rinku and Angural joined BJP at a ceremony held in the national Capital.
AAP had already announced Rinku as their candidate from Jalandhar constituency for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
Rinku was upset with the AAP leadership for not fulfilling promises which included announcement pertaining to setting up of sports hub and sport university, execution of smart city project and setting up of industrial park in Jalandhar not being fulfilled.
The promise was made during the Jalandhar by-election which he won by 58,691 votes.
Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann also held a closed-door meeting with Rinku to address his concerns on March 19, but the talks did not materialise.
Rinku was earlier with Congress before he joined AAP just before the Jalandhar Lok Sabha by-poll on April 5.
Meanwhile, Angural, who was in the national Capital New Delhi since last week, was first to make accusations of poaching against the BJP in 2022 following which the government named it as ‘Operation Lotus’.
Both leaders have a common base in Jalandhar west constituency and remained at loggerheads mostly in their political careers before Rinku joined AAP last year.
One of the senior AAP leaders aware of the developments said Rinku had shown no signs of enthusiasm after his name figured in the first list of candidates announced by AAP.
“The sitting MP had strongly put forward his demand before the party leadership to provide him some sort of financial assistance to kick off campaigning for the polls. This is going to be third back-to-back elections for Rinku as he first unsuccessfully contested 2022 state assembly polls and Jalandhar Lok Sabha by-election in May 2023,” the leader said.
Punjab will go to polls in a single phase on June 1 to elect 13 Lok Sabha MPs.
The counting of Lok Sabha polling votes will take place on June 4.
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