Former Congress MP from Karnal Arvind Sharma on Friday joined the Bharatiya Janata Party after meeting party president Amit Shah in the capital on Thursday.
Sharma had won the Sonepat Lok Sabha seat in 1996 as an independent candidate and joined the Congress in 1999.
He won Karnal seat in 2004 and 2009 but lost to BJP’s Ashwini Chopra in 2014 elections. He then quit the Congress to briefly join the Bahujan Samaj Party, but later quit that as well. He had since remained unaffiliated until Friday, when he joined the BJP.
What Lok Sabha seat he had bargained for still remains to be seen. Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi has also asked for Karnal.
The other seats that he could possibly be allotted are Rohtak and Sonepat.
Besides, Ashwini Chopra who is the sitting BJP MP from Karnal has cited his illness to seek the ticket for his wife Kiran Chopra.
There was a buzz that BJP could ask Sharma to contest from Rohtak, where Congress veteran and ex-CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s son is the sitting MP.
