Haryana: Four-term MLA Kiran Chaudhary quits Congress, set to join BJP

Kiran Chaudhary, a four-term MLA from Haryana's Tosham Assembly segment and daughter-in-law of late Congress stalwart Bansi Lal, quit the Congress on Tuesday (June 18). Buzz is that Chaudhary is likely to join the BJP on Wednesday (June 19).

A staunch rival of Congress's Bhupendra Singh Hooda, Chaudhary and her daughter, former Bhiwani MP Shruti Chaudhary, had until two months ago been conducting outreach rallies across Haryana along with Congress's other Hooda rivals, Kumari Selja and Randeep Surjewala. The party denied Shruti a Lok Sabha ticket, ostensibly under pressure from Hooda, who got his loyalist, Rao Dan Singh, to contest from the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh seat.

Singh lost the Lok Sabha election by just over 41,000 votes to the BJP's Dharambir Chaudhary. Singh has alleged that Kiran and Shruti sabotaged his election, but he managed to reduce the BJP's victory margin significantly. Shruti had lost the Bhiwani seat in 2019 by a margin of over 4.40 lakh votes and had finished a distant third in 2014. 

There is also speculation that the BJP could field Kiran Chaudhary as its candidate for the Rajya Sabha bypoll in Haryana that has been necessitated after Deepender Hooda's Lok Sabha victory from Rohtak. Deependra, son of Chaudhary's archrival Bhupinder Hooda, was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Haryana in 2020 after he lost the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from his family stronghold of Rohtak. The BJP could field Chaudhary's daughter Shruti as its candidate from Tosham.

The Jat connection

The induction of the mother-daughter duo into the party would also give the BJP a Jat fillip at a time when the saffron party is finding it difficult to rebuild bridges with the community that has formidable electoral clout in Haryana.