New Delhi:

Student leader Kanhaiya Kumar and Gujarat Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani are set to join the Congress today.

Posters welcoming Kanhaiya Kumar to the party were put up outside the Congress office in Delhi this morning, hours ahead of the widely reported switch.

Kanhaiya Kumar joined the CPI or Communist Party of India just before the 2019 general election and contested from his hometown Begusarai in Bihar against Giriraj Singh of the BJP. But he failed to win the election.

A former president of the JNU students’ union, Kanhaiya Kumar was jailed over “anti-national slogans” raised at an event in 2016 to mark the death anniversary of Parliament attack mastermind Afzal Guru.

Jignesh Mevani, a legislator who represents the Vadgam constituency in Gujarat, is key to the Congress’s poll arithmetic ahead of elections in the state next year.

Mr Mevani, a lawyer and former journalist, joins the Congress at a time the party is reaching out to the scheduled castes community, its traditional support base; the party chose a Dalit Chief Minister in Punjab – Charanjit Singh Channi – to replace Amarinder Singh.

Mr Mevai also tweeted his support: “The decision of appointing Charanjit singh ji as the CM of Punjab is a message that Rahul Gandhi and Congress have given. It will have tremendous impact amongst not just dalits but all the subaltern masses. For Dalits, the move is not just brilliant but soothing too.”

Kanhaiya Kumar, say sources, has already met with Rahul Gandhi twice in two weeks. He has also met Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.