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Former Madhya Pradesh minister and four-time Congress MLA from Chhindwara Dipak Saxena and his supporters joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday night.

MP Chief Minister Mohan Yadav welcomed Saxena, a close aide of senior Congress leader Kamal Nath, into the ruling party.

Saxena, who quit the Congress on March 22, said he was joining the BJP as he was influenced by the works of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, CM Yadav and state BJP chief VD Sharma. Earlier, his son Ajay Saxena had joined the BJP.

“The Congress has become aimless under Kamal Nath’s son Nakul Nath, sitting MP from Chhindwara. My father was being marginalised and the workers too were being ignored in Chhindwara for the last six years. That is why my father took the decision to part ways with the Congress,” Ajay Saxena said.

Dipak Saxena had quit his Assembly seat when Kamal Nath became CM in 2018 so that latter could become an MLA.

On March 29, Kamal Nath loyalist and Amarwara MLA Kamlesh Pratap Shah crossed over to the BJP. Shah has won the Amarwara seat thrice in a row.

In the November 2023 MP assembly polls, the Congress had won all the seven assembly seats of Chhindwara district. The BJP is making all efforts to ensure it wrests Chhindwara, the only seat the Congress had won in MP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Nakul Nath, who has renominated by the Congress, will take on BJP's Vivek Sahu. Polls are scheduled on April 19.