Yashwant Sinha, former Union Finance Minister under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, today joined the Trinamool Congress weeks ahead of the West Bengal Assembly election. The 83-year-old had quit his earlier party, the BJP, in 2018. His joining Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's side is likely to be viewed as a prize catch for an outfit that has seen a steady outflow of both leaders and cadres in the past few months.
Mr Sinha joined his new party a little after 12 noon at the Trinamool Bhawan in Kolkata in the presence of Derek O Brien, Sudip Bandopadhyay, and Subrata Mukherjee.
Meanwhile, India on Saturday recorded 24,882 fresh COVID-19 infections, the highest so far this year, which took the caseload to 1,13,33,728, according to Union health ministry data.
This is also the highest daily rise in the last 83 days. As many as 26,624 new infections were recorded on December 20.
The death count climbed to 1,58,446 with 140 new fatalities, the data updated at 8 am showed.
The country's active caseload increased to 2,02,022, which constitutes 1.74 per cent of the total infections. The recovery rate dropped to 96.82 per cent.
