New Delhi: In a jolt to Congress in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, senior party leader Rita Bahuguna Joshi on Thursday joined the BJP and attacked Rahul Gandhi over the way he was running the party and his reaction to the army’s surgical strikes.
While the BJP is upbeat about the induction of a Brahmin face in the party, the Congress put up a brave front and described her as a “spent force who has no support base”.
Rita Bahuguna Joshi is the seventh Congress MLA to have quit the Congress in the past four months. Her brother and former Uttarakhand Chief Minister, Mr Vijay Bahuguna had also recently defected to the BJP in Uttarakhand.
Reacting to her shift to BJP, Congress state unit chief, Mr Raj Babbar quipped, “BJP is now collecting a gang of traitors and perhaps in the next election Ritaji will contest from another party.”
Joshi, 67, daughter of late Congress veteran Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna joined BJP in the presence of party president Amit Shah at the party headquarters here. A former UPCC president who resigned as a Congress MLA, Joshi said there is no alternative to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP.
Joshi, who was said to be unhappy with the Congress leadership over projection of Sheila Dikshit as its chief ministerial face in Uttar Pradesh, rued the present state of affairs in the party, alleging that it is in such a bad shape that it has contracted out its working to strategist Prashant Kishor.
Slamming Rahul for his ‘dalali’ barb at Modi over the surgical strikes, Joshi said she has been disheartened by the events which happened in the last few days.
“India is fighting terrorism and the Modi government has given the army a free hand. Besides valour of the army, the government’s strong leadership was also behind the surgical strikes.
“Along with the nation, I too was happy. The whole world accepted India’s arguments beh-ind the strikes. Congress, however, behaved like a small party and went on to question it. The whole nation was upset with a phrase like ‘khoon like dalali’,” she said attacking Gandhi.
Noting that she had spent 24 years out of 27 years of her political career in Congress and only 10 months in Samajwadi Party, she said, “The decision to quit Congress was not easy. However, I took it in the interest of the nation and the state (UP).”
Her joining BJP is expected to give a boost to the party’s efforts to consolidate Brahmin voters as it looks to capture power in the state following a gap of over 15 years.
