Mumbai, April 11
Accusing the Congress of “deviating” from its ideologies and traditions and launching a scathing attack on Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi, veteran party leader V.C. Shukla joined the Sharad Pawar-led NCP here today.

Welcoming Mr Shukla, a nine-time Lok Sabha MP who resigned from the Congress, into the party fold, Mr Pawar said his joining the NCP would give a new dimension to Chhattisgarh politics.

Describing the senior Congress leader as an able “parliamentarian and administrator”, Mr Pawar told reporters that Mr Shukla would be the new chief of the Chhattisgarh unit of the NCP.

Apparently making it clear that Mr Shukla would get a free hand in the state’s politics, Mr Pawar said the former would build the party organisation from bloc to the state levels. “He will constitute the party’s Parliamentary board and be responsible for holding talks with other parties to forge an alliance to take on the communal forces”, Mr Pawar said.

The Maratha strongman also hinted that a senior leader from Kerala would soon be joining the NCP. “You will hear something major in a day or two about somebody joining the NCP in Kerala”, Mr Pawar said.

Clarifying that he had nothing personal against AICC President Sonia Gandhi, Mr Shukla sharply attacked the Congress for having “serious shortcomings and committing blunders”. He said efforts to suggest corrective measures to Ms Gandhi went unheeded.

Mr Shukla, in his letter to Ms Gandhi, said he had been expelled from the party twice along with Indira Gandhi and later in the company of others, but this was the first time that he felt compelled to resign from the party.

He said there was an alternative Congress party available which was faithfully following the time-honoured traditional Congress programmes and policies and headed by an experienced and able senior Congress leader. “Since both parties are Congress, ‘’we feel we are moving from one room to another in the same political house’’, he said.

Mr Shukla said in the recent past he had had a bitter experience at the national level because of which he decided to quit. When asked why the delay, he said he was in consultation with his colleagues from the district level to the tehsil level over the past four months and took the decision after their consent.