Controversial cricketer S. Sreesanth on Friday joined the BJP in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and will contest the Kerala Assembly elections.
Controversial cricketer S. Sreesanth on Friday joined the BJP in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and will contest the Kerala Assembly elections. The cricketer arrived at the BJP office ahead of the central election committee (CEC) meeting late on Friday evening.
Mr Sreesanth will contest the polls from the prestigious Thiruvananthapuram seat in Kerala. The CEC meeting of the BJP also cleared the names of 51 candidates for the Assembly elections in Kerala. There are 140 seats in Kerala, where state polls would be held in the month of May.
The BJP has high hopes from the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency where the party nominee O. Rajagopal had come second to the winning candidate of the Congress Shashi Tharoor in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP had led on five Assembly constituencies in the state during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Mr Sreesanth took the membership of the BJP in the presence of Union minister J.P. Nadda and state party chief K. Rajashekharan. Incidentally, the cricketer was made an offer to join the party and contest elections without taking the Kerala unit into account last week, sources said.
The temperamental cricketer was banned by the BCCI due to his alleged involvement in the IPL betting in 2013.
The BJP is eyeing big gains in Kerala which has so far seen either Congress-led UDF or CPM-led LDF governments. The party does not have a single legislator in the Kerala Assembly. The BJP had polled 10 per cent votes in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls even though the vote share in the last three Assembly elections had been static at five per cent.
