SM Krishna with BJP national president Amit Shah at the party HQ in Delhi today. (Twitter)

Former Congress leader, SM Krishna who served as the Minister of External Affairs from 2009 to 2012 has joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today at the party headquarters in New Delhi in the presence of party President Amit Shah. Krishna who was earlier in Congress, resigned from the party on January 29, 2017 and stated that he “was being ignored since 2012,” and was earlier disrespected and sidelined in Karnataka. SM Krishna served as the 16th Chief Minister of Karnataka from 1999 to 2004 and was also the 19th Governor of Maharashtra from 2004 to 2008. According to a PTI report, BJP’s Karnataka unit chief B S Yeddyurappa invited S M Krishna to join the party on March 8. Reportedly he said, “Today R Ashoka and I met him (Krishna) to invite him to join BJP.. I’m hopeful that he will join the party at the earliest.”

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Watch LIVE Former Foreign Minister SM Krishna joins BJP https://t.co/AI1pvJys8i

— ANI (@ANI) March 22, 2017

84-year-old SM Krishna after serving Congress for over 45 years resigned from the party in January 2017 stating that the no longer needs him. He stated his political career in 1962 with the Praja Socialist Party. He joined and served Congress as a minister between 1983–84 under Indira Gandhi and between 1984 and 1985 under Rajiv Gandhi. He became the Chief Minister of Karnataka after winning the assembly polls in 1999, at that time he was the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president. At the time when Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister of India, Krishna served as the External Affairs Minister, but he resigned from the post in 2012 to return to the Karnataka State Politics.

This year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged as the winner in 4 out of 5 Assembly Elections. The party won in Uttar Pradesh with a large number of seats. Many ministers changed their parties and joined BJP in the last one year.