The former Haryana minister, Kiran Choudhry, who was associated with the Congress for four-decades, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday. She was accompanied by her daughter Shruti.
She is a five-time MLA, 69-year-old Kiran Choudhry, the widow of late Surender Singh, and daughter-in-law of late former chief minister Bansi Lal, who is credited to be the 'architect' of modern Haryana. Currently, she is serving as the MLA from Tosham. Her daughter Shruti was a Member of Parliament from the constituency Bhiwani-Mahendragarh.
The mother-daughter duo resigned as members of the primary Congress the previous day and officially joined the BJP at the party headquarters in Delhi. Present on the occasion were Union Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, and BJP National General Secretary Tarun Chugh. Apart from this, also present was Kiran Choudhry's younger sister, ex-MP, and erstwhile Uttar Pradesh minister Anuradha Chaudhary.
During one such touching moment, Shruti touched Khattar's feet when he handed over the joining letter to her.
He quipped that though Kiran Choudhry's body was with the Congress when he was Haryana CM, her spirit was with the BJP. "Whenever we would meet in the Haryana State Assembly, despite being political rivals, we could finally understand what the other was thinking without saying it in words," he said, drawing a peal of laughter from the audience.
She referred to Manohar Lal Khattar as her "bade bhai" (elder brother).
On her first remarks as a BJP member, Kiran Choudhry said that Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Bhupinder Singh Hooda has been working against the growth of other leaders within the Haryana Congress. She had also told that while writing resignation letter to Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and shared on Social Media, saying that Haryana Congress was being run as a personal "fiefdom."
"It is most unfortunate that the Congress party in Haryana is being run as a personal fiefdom, leaving no room for sincere voices like mine, whom they have suppressed, humiliated, and conspired against systematically, thereby significantly hindering my efforts to represent our people and uphold the values I stand for," she wrote.
In her resignation letter, Shruti Choudhry also criticized the state unit for being "centered around one person" whom she accuses of compromising the party's interests to gain personally.
Though she did not take the name of Hooda, there was little doubt in her letter that he was the target of her attack. "The Congress party in Haryana has, regrettably, become centered around one person who has compromised the party's interests for his own selfish and petty interests. It is time for me to move on so that I may continue to uphold the interests of my people and the values I stand for," she wrote.
Sources close to Kiran Choudhry told ThePrint that she was angry with the Congress since it did not give Shruti a ticket to contest the Lok Sabha elections from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh, which she represented between 2009 and 2014 and lost in 2014 and 2019.
Read also | Congress needs to decide who is their 'biggest enemy': Annie Raja Questions Congress
