Kuldeep Bishnoi, who left the Haryana Congress today, will be joining the BJP tomorrow
Congress MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi resigned from the Haryana Assembly today, a day before he joins the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Mr Bishnoi submitted his resignation to Assembly Speaker Gian Chand Gupta in Chandigarh.
His resignation will necessitate a by-election for the Adampur seat in Hisar district, which Mr Bishnoi currently represents.
He said the Congress has "deviated from its ideology and is no longer what it was during Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi's time".
Mr Bishnoi, 53, was expelled from all party positions by the Congress soon after he cross-voted in the Rajya Sabha polls in June.
The four-time MLA and two-time MP had been upset from before that and had raised a banner of revolt after the party ignored him for the post of its Haryana unit chief during a revamp earlier this year.
For the younger son of former Haryana Chief Minister Bhajan Lal, it will be the second parting with the Congress, nearly six years after he had returned to the fold.
Mr Bishnoi and his father Bhajan Lal had floated the Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) in 2007 after the Congress handpicked Bhupinder Singh Hooda for the chief minister's post following the party's thumping victory in 2005.
The Haryana Janhit Congress later entered into a tie-up with the BJP and two other parties, who jointly contested the 2014 Lok Sabha polls in Haryana.
But the alliance crumbled before the assembly polls.
Around six years ago, Mr Bishnoi returned to the Congress fold. However, despite his return to the Congress, Mr Bishnoi and Mr Hooda never had warm relations.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
