In a dramatic political switch over in Haryana politics, former Lok Sabha MP Ashok Tanwar joined the Congress party within an hour of campaigning for the BJP. This change happened during an election rally in Mahendergarh, where he was welcomed back by senior Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
Tanwar has been politically quite an unsteady character, changing the party affiliations within the last few years. He was a member of Congress, but he left in 2019 due to internal issues, mainly with Hooda. He was a member of the Trinamool Congress for a short while and then shifted to the AAP in the past year and switched over to the BJP at the start of this year. While he was still with the BJP, he endorsed the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and vowed to ensure the party’s victory.
The timing of Tanwar’s return to Congress is especially important, as it has come only two days before the Haryana Assembly elections that are set to take place on October 5. At the end of Rahul Gandhi’s speech at the rally, an announcement was made to bring Tanwar on the stage, where it was declared that Tanwar has come back to his ‘home’ in Congress.
This is considered to be a strategic advantage for the Congress party as it aims at coming back to power in a state that has been ruled by the BJP for almost a decade.His return is expected to boost Congress’s campaign and may have an impact on the voter as the party seeks to rally its support.
On the other hand, BJP leaders have dismissed Tanwar’s exit as insignificant; Haryana Home Minister Anil Vij even called him a ‘bird of passage,’ implying that his political move is of no significance to the BJP. With this political drama on, people will be keenly watching how this reunion will turn out to be in the elections for Congress and BJP.
