BSP's Varanasi candidate against PM Narendra Modi in 2014 Lok Sabha poll joins BJP

Jaiswal joined the BJP in Lucknow today.

File photo

New Delhi: Vijay Prakash Jaiswal, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader, who contested and lost against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, on Tuesday joined the Bharatiya Janata Party.

In the 2014 election, Jaiswal had got almost 60,000 votes against PM Modi, who won the seat with more than 5.80 lakh votes. Modi was followed by Aam Aadmi Party's Arvind Kejriwal and Congress' Ajay Rai who had also contested from the same seat in the last Lok Sabha poll.

Vijay Prakash Jaiswal is a businessman by profession. 

In the meantime, expelled Trinamool Congress MP Anupam Hazra and Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra Assembly Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil's son Sujay Vikhe-Patil also joined BJP on Tuesday. 

Sujay Vikhe-Patil was welcomed to the party fold by several senior leaders including Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and state party chief Raosahabe Danve-Patil who offered him a BJP flag.

On the other hand, Hazra was welcomed to the BJP by senior party leader Mukul Roy - a former TMC leader himself, and  BJP General Secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya at the party headquarters in New Delhi. Elected to the Lok Sabha in May of 2014 from the Bolpur constituency, Hazra had been a vocal critic of TMC leadership and had even shared his views on social media. He was first warned by TMC and later expelled.

Although he had already been expelled, Hazra's entry to the BJP would come as a jolt to TMC. 

The Mamata Banerjee-led party had already lost its legal cell leader Devjani Dasgupta to BJP on Monday and Roy has claimed many more are set to cross over in the days to come.