Former Member of Parliament from Telangana and popular Telugu actress M Vijayashanti returned to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday after a formal induction ceremonyin Delhi, news agency ANI reported. This comes a day after she met Union home minister Amit Shah. Vijayashanti had recently quit the Congress party which she had joined in 2014.
After her meeting with Shah, Telangana BJP leader G Vivek Venkatswamy had said, “BJP will definitely win in Telangana Assembly next time. Vijayashanti ji will be at the forefront for the development of the party in the state.”
Vijayashanti began her political career with the BJP in 1998 and was made secretary of the party’s Mahila Morcha. When the Telangana movement reached its peak, she quit the BJP and floated her own regional party Talli Telangana, but could not sustain it for long.
She merged her party with the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) in 2009 and got elected to Lok Sabha from Medak parliamentary constituency. However, when she was sidelined in the TRS during the formation of Telangana in 2014, Vijayashanti resigned from the TRS and joined the Congress.
She was the star campaigner for the Congress in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, and later made advisor to the election campaign committee of the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC).
However, she had been keeping away from meetings and other activities of the Congress for quite some time and on many occasions, she expressed her unhappiness over the PCC not inviting her to the party meetings.
The BJP had made major gains in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) polls as it won 48 seats, seven less than the ruling TRS which emerged as the single largest party winning 55 seats.
The strong performance by BJP came on the heels of its victory last month in the Dubbaka assembly seat. The party had wrested the seat from the ruling TRS.
