Ex-CM Ajit Jogi’s wife, son asks Congress to let them merge JCC-J into Congress | Latest News India

RAIPUR: The Janta Congress Chhattisgarh (Jogi) [JCC-J] set up by former chief minister Ajit Jogi after exiting the Congress in June 2016 has sought a merger with the party, saying it too shared the Congress’s ideology.

In a letter dated December 18 to Chhattisgarh Congress president Dipak Baij, Renu Jogi, national president of JCC-J and the wife of the late Ajit Jogi, said the party’s core committee had unanimously decided to merge the party with the Congress and requested approval for their admission to the Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee.

“It is highlighted that the only recognised regional party of Chhattisgarh, the Janta Congress Chhattisgarh (J) formed by the state’s first chief minister, late Ajit Jogi, is of Congress ideology,’ said the letter, also signed by the party’s state chief and son Amit Jogi.

Bureaucrat-turned-politician Ajit Jogi resigned from the Congress in June 2016 months after his son, Ajit Jogi, was expelled from the party for six years in January following a leaked telephonic conversation allegedly pointed fingers at him for fixing a bypoll in favour of the BJP by putting only a “demo fight from the Congress side”.

Jogi, the state’s first chief minister when it was carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2000, formed the JCC-J in 2016 and fought the 2018 assembly elections in an alliance with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

The alliance won seven seats, with JCC(J) securing five and the BSP, two. But the party’s performance had been on the decline after Jogi’s death in 2020. In the 2023 state elections, the JCC(J) failed to win a single seat.