Lok Satta Founder Jayaprakash Narayan Flirting With BJP?

Speculation is afoot that Jayaprakash Narayan, IAS officer-turned-politician who had founded the Lok Satta Party, is planning to join the BJP.

The rumours began to gain ground after he met BJP President Amit Shah who was in Hyderabad for a day's visit on Friday. The BJP national president as part of the party's "Sampark Se Samarthan" initiative had called on prominent persons from various fields to explain the programmes and schemes being implemented by the NDA government. As part of that he called on Eenadu group Chairman Ramoji Rao and ace badminton player Saina Nehwal. When JP too met Shah, it triggered off speculations that the political reformer was gravitating towards the saffron party.

BJP circles however discounted the theory and asserted that JP's meeting with Shah was part of BJP's campaign to educate intellectuals and other like-minded persons from various fields about the party's welfare and development programmes through its Sampark Se Samarthan campaign. However soon after meeting Shah JP rushed to the national capital, and this added further fuel to the speculations.

JP, who had served as an MLA in undivided Andhra Pradesh when his party first entered the electoral fray and later lost in the Parliament elections in 2014, had announced on March 23, 2016, that the Lok Satta party would stay away from politics for a while. Thus his meeting Shah and speculations about his joining the BJP have raised many an eyebrow in political circles.