Indian cricketer Ravindra Jadeja has joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), his wife, Rivaba Jadeja, said in a post on Thursday.
Rivaba Jadeja, who is already a BJP MLA from Gujarat’s Jamnagar North assembly constituency, shared her and her husband’s membership card on X.
Ravindra Jadeja announced retirement from T20 international Cricket on June 30, a day after India won the T20 World Cup 2024 tournament in Barbados.
Born on December 6, 1988 in Saurashtra, Ravindra Jadeja has represented India in 72 Tests and 197 One Day Internationals, having taken 294 and 220 wickets respectively. As a left hand batter, the 36-year-old allrounder has scored 6,000 runs in both formats.
Jadeja was instrumental in India winning the 2013 ICC Champions Trophy in England, emerging as the leading wicket-taker with 12 wickets.
In the T20 format, Jadeja has been a member of four Indian Premier League winning teams, once with Rajasthan Royals and thrice with Chennai Super Kings.
BJP’s membership drive
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday launched the Bharatiya Janata Party’s 2024 membership drive ‘Sanghatan Parva, Sadasyata Abhiyan 2024’ by renewing his membership and urged party workers to make special efforts to connect with the youth.
The BJP has set a target of enrolling 100 million members through the latest drive. Between 2014 and 2019, 180 million crore members enrolled in the party.
During the launch of the drive, PM Modi said that BJP’s membership drive isn’t just a ritual but expansion of the family and also an ideological movement.
He also said that the membership drive should begin from the weakest polling station, where the party got the least votes.
“It’s easy to gain members where the BJP is popular, but we must work harder in challenging areas to spread our influence and gain support,” he said.
Recalling the hardship faced by the workers in the initial years, the PM said when he was not in politics, during the era of the Jana Sangh (the precursor to the BJP), workers used to paint the symbol, a deepak (lamp), on walls with great enthusiasm, but political opponents used to mock them.
“They used to joke in their speeches that one cannot reach the corridors of power by painting lamps on walls… We are those people who painted lotus on the walls with conviction, because we believed that the lotus painted on the walls will someday get painted on hearts as well,” he said.
