New Delhi: After being dropped by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) from the candidate list for the Delhi Assembly elections, sitting MLA from Dwarka Adarsh Shastri, the grandson of Lal Bahadur Shastri, joined the Congress.
He joined the party in the presence of state president Subhash Chopra, AICC in-charge PC Chacko and party spokesperson Mukesh Sharma.
Shastri quit the AAP after it denied him ticket to seek re-election from Dwarka constituency. He is expected to be fielded from the seat by his new party to contest the February 8 polls.
The grandson of former Prime Minister Shastri also held the posts of national spokesperson and co-convener of overseas affairs cell of AAP.
Shastri had won the Dwarka seat with 59.08% votes in 2015. He was removed from the AAP list and Vinay Kumar Mishra, a former Congress leader and son of former Congress MP Mahabal Mishra, has been given the chance to contest from the seat.
Mishra had joined AAP on Monday and was given the ticket the next day.
Earlier, sources close to Shastri said the list came as a "surprise" to him as he was told by party chief Arvind Kejriwal that he should continue the party campaign.
"He was told that he will recontest. The list came as a shock. The MLA was not in the loop about the process," a source said.
Also, he was unhappy for being replaced by an "outsider". "It would have been better to replace him with another party member and not an outsider if the party considered him incompetent," said the source.
The MLA claimed he transformed the area and worked hard in the last five years for the constituency.
While the AAP has named all 70 candidates, the Congress is yet to do so.
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