Expelled All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader 'Karate' R Thiyagarajan, the deputy mayor of Chennai, has joined the Congress.
Thiyagarajan had written to party chief Sonia Gandhi expressing his wish to rejoin the party, which he left five years back and she gave her approval to it, Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president M Krishnasamy said in a statement.
It will be a sort of homecoming for Thiyagarajan as he made his electoral debut as a Congress candidate in a bypoll to Mylapore Assembly seat way back in 1994.
He joined the AIADMK just before the 2001 Assembly polls and was made the AIADMK south Chennai district unit.
He was also made deputy mayor soon after the civic polls in 2001.
He was expelled from the AIADMK for anti-party activities.
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