In a major political development ahead of the Haryana assembly polls later this year, senior Congress leader Kiran Choudhry and her daughter Shruti Choudhry resigned from the party on Tuesday to join the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday.
The assembly elections in the state are due in October.
Kiran Choudhry, snapping her four-decade-long ties with the Congress party, told news agency PTI that both she and Shruti will be joining the BJP on Wednesday.
Shruti Choudhry, a former MP, was also the working president of the Haryana unit of the Congress.
Their joining is likely to give the BJP a big boost in Haryana, with a few months remaining before the polls.
Kiran Choudhry, a sitting MLA, is the daughter-in-law of former Haryana chief minister Bansi Lal.
She is considered the bete noire of senior Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
Both have sent separate resignation letters to Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge in which they took a veiled attack at Hooda.
While Kiran Choudhry, 69, wrote that the Haryana Congress is being run as a “personal fiefdom”, Shruti Choudhry, in an apparent reference to Hooda, alleged that the state unit centres around one person who has compromised the interest of the party for his own “selfish” and “petty interests”.
“It is most unfortunate that the Congress party in Haryana is being run as the personal fiefdom leaving no space for sincere voices like mine, who have been stifled, humiliated and conspired against in a most well-orchestrated and systematic manner, thus, significantly hampering my diligent efforts to represent our people and uphold the values, I have always stood for,” Kiran Choudhry said in her letter to Kharge.
Kiran, learnt to be upset with the denial of ticket to Shruti Choudhry from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh constituency in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls, also said: “They have pushed me into a corner. There is a limit to humiliation one can suffer.”
“I have been a loyal and steadfast member of the Congress for the last four decades and have, over these years, devoted my life to the party and the people whom I represent,” she added.
Shruti, in her letter, said: “The Congress party in Haryana has, unfortunately, become one-person centric who has compromised the interest of the party for his own selfish and petty interests and it is thus time for me to move on so that I may continue to uphold the interest of my people and the values that I stand for.”
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Published: 18 Jun 2024, 10:22 PM IST