Haryana MLA Kiran Choudhry and her daughter Shruti Choudhry joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday, a day after resigning from the Congress.
Kiran Choudhry, who is the sitting MLA from the Tosham Assembly constituency, described her move to the BJP as a “new beginning, a new dawn”.
Her daughter, Shruti Choudhry, was the working president of the Haryana unit of the Congress and had served as an MP from the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh Lok Sabha seat from 2009 to 2014.
They joined the Hindutva party along with their supporters in the presence of Union minister Manohar Lal Khattar, the party’s national general secretary Tarun Chugh, Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini and other senior party leaders at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi.
“Today, I took the membership of Bharatiya Janata Party along with my workers for the purpose of developed region and state for the concept of Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas [development for everyone] and one India, great India,” Kiran Choudhry said in a post on social media.
In her resignation letter to party president Mallikarjun Kharge, Kiran Choudhry alleged that the Congress in Haryana was being run as a “personal fiefdom”, with “no space for sincere voices like mine, who have been stifled, humiliated and conspired against in a most well-orchestrated and systematic manner”.
She said that she was “compelled to look forward at a fresh start” to serve the state.
Shruti Choudhry, in her resignation letter, said that the Congress’ operations in Haryana were centred around one person “who has compromised the interests of the party for his own selfish interests”.
BJP leader Om Prakash Dhankar claimed that the Congress had “ignored and sidelined a good leader [Shruti Choudhry] while refusing to give her the rightful dues in the party,” The Indian Express reported.
Dhankar seemed to be referring to the Congress’ denial of a Lok Sabha ticket to Shruti Choudhry in the recently-concluded general election.
Instead, the party fielded Rao Dan Singh from the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh Lok Sabha seat. Rao Dan Singh is considered to be a close confidant of Congress leader and former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
Rao Dan Singh lost the seat to the BJP’s Dharambir Singh by a margin of over 40,000 votes. Dharambir Singh had represented the constituency between 2019 to 2024.
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