Former Haryana Congress Chief Ashok Tanwar, Several Leaders Join BJP

Jaipur: With two weeks left for the Rajasthan Assembly elections, the Congress in the state suffered a double blow as former Congress minister Ram Gopal Bairwa and former MLA Ashok Tanwar and several other leaders joined the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The new leaders were inducted in the presence of Rajasthan BJP President CP Joshi and Member of Lok Sabha Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore at the party office in Jaipur.

Welcoming the new leaders in the party fold, Joshi said, ‘It seems that we will make Jhotwara ‘Congress-mukt’. I express gratitude to all of you for reposing faith in the BJP under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’.

Jhotwara, a Legislative Assembly constituency, is a suburban area of Jaipur.

Tanwar, after quitting Congress in 2019, has been on a party-hopping spree while also launching his own party ‘Apna Bharat Morcha’ in February 2021.

He had joined the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in November 2021.

He was once known to have been a close aide of the former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi when he was in charge of the Indian National Youth Congress (INYC). Tanwar was the chief of INYC.

However, Tanwar after a prolonged turf war with the former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda quit Congress in October 2019 ahead of the state Assembly polls.
In the 2019 Haryana Assembly elections, Tanwar had extended his support to Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) and campaigned against Congress.

In 2009, he won the Lok Sabha elections from Sirsa in Haryana as a Congress candidate. However, he had lost the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

In the 2018 Rajasthan assembly elections, the Congress won 99 seats while the BJP won 73 seats in the 200-member house.

Rajasthan will go to polls on November 25, the counting of which will take place on December 3 along with four other state assembly elections.