Former Congress leader Jaiveer Shergill now BJP spokesperson; Amarinder Singh too gets new role

In November last year, Amarinder Singh had resigned from the Congress and floated a new party ahead of this year's Punjab elections, before eventually merging it with the BJP earlier this year. Sunil Jakhar quit the party in May.

Former Congress spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill was on Friday (December 2) appointed as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national spokesperson. The party also appointed former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and Sunil Jakhar and former Uttar Pradesh President Swatantra Dev Singh as members of its national executive.

In a statement, the BJP said that Madan Kaushik, Vishnu Deo Sai, its former presidents of Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh respectively, Rana Gurmit Singh Sodhi, Manoranjan Kalia and Amanjot Kaur Ramoowalia, all three from Punjab, have been made special invitees to the national executive.

During his exit from the Congress, Jaiveer Shergill had slammed the Gandhis, saying the "vision of the party's decision-makers is no longer in sync" with the aspirations of the youth and that sycophancy was "eating the Congress like 'termites'".

Speaking to reporters, Jaiveer said all three Gandhis had denied him a meeting for over a year, adding that he had "severed all ties" with the party. The 39-year-old lawyer was among the youngest and most prominent spokespersons of the Congress.

Jaiveer's resignation was the third in August after two veterans, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Anand Sharma, quit the grand old party in their home states.

In November last year, Amarinder Singh had resigned from the Congress and floated a new party ahead of this year's Punjab elections, before eventually merging it with the BJP earlier this year. Sunil Jakhar quit the party in May.

The Congress has lost several leaders while struggling with election defeats and an organisational drift over the past few years.

An exodus started in 2020 with the exit of Jyotiraditya Scindia, who is now a Union Minister, and Uttar Pradesh minister Jitin Prasada. This year, former Union Ministers Kapil Sibal, Ashwani Kumar and RPN Singh quit the party.