Amid chants of Jai Shri Ram and a declaration of support for the Assembly poll due later this year in Madhya Pradesh, an outfit called Bajrang Sena merged itself with the Congress in Bhopal on June 6.
The development comes shortly after the Congress’s pre-election announcement of banning the Bajrang Dal sparked a row in Karnataka with the BJP saying it was an insult to lord Hanuman or Bajrang Bali. Said to be a decade-old organisation founded in Madhya Pradesh’s Chhatarpur, the Bajrang Sena too derives its name from the Hindu deity Bajrang Bali.
Ranveer Pateria, the national president of the erstwhile Bajrang Sena, along with many others joined the Congress in the presence of the party’s State president and former CM Kamal Nath, and Deepak Joshi, who recently switched over to the Congress from the BJP.
Mr. Pateria said that he and his fellow Sena members were adopting the Congress’s ideology and were committed to defeat the BJP Government in Madhya Pradesh.
