Khushbu joins BJP hours after quitting Congress

Ahead of the Asssmbly elections in Tamil Nadu, the BJP received a big boost when actor-turned-politician Khushbu Sundar joined the party on Monday (October 10), just hours after she announced that she was quitting the Congress where she was “pushed and suppressed”. 

She joined the BJP in Delhi in the presence of party  president JP Nadda and Tamil Nadu unit chief L Murugan.

Related News: Congress spokesperson Khushbu quits party, likely to join BJP

“The country needs someone like Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take it in the right direction,” she said in an interaction with media persons after joining the BJP, whose leaders said she will help the party change the way it is perceived in the state.

“My expectation from BJP isn’t about what the party is going to do for me, but about what the party is going to do for people of the country. When you’ve 128 crore people actually believing in one man and that’s our PM, I think they’re doing something absolutely right,” she said.

Khushbu announced her resignation from the Congress in a letter written to party president Sonia Gandhi. In the letter, she said, “Few elements seated at higher level within the party, people who have no connectivity with the ground reality or public recognition, are dictating terms and people like me who wanted to work for the party sincerely are being pushed and suppressed.” 

She said she decided to break away from the party “after a long thorough thought process”. 

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The Congress sacked her as party’s spokesperson in Tamil Nadu just before the letter was made public. It said her decision to quit will have ‘zero impact’ on the party in the state. Her activities have been against the party’s beliefs, Tamil Nadu Congress leader KS Alagiri said. In the Congress, she was only seen as an actress, not as a politician, he said.

Khushbu started her political career with the DMK, a party she joined in May 2010. She quit the party to join the Congress in 2014, saying that she felt sidelined in the Dravidian outfit.

Political journalist Madan Ravichandran and former Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer Saravana Kumar also joined the BJP along with Khushbu.