Gurugram: The Aam Aadmi Party’s face in Haryana, Ashok Tanwar, an ex-member of Rahul Gandhi’s team who headed the Congress state unit for over five years, is in talks with the Bharatiya Janata Party and is set to join it shortly, ThePrint has learnt.
A source close to Tanwar confirmed that the former Sirsa MP was on his way to the BJP.
The talk of the Dalit leader leaving the AAP gained traction after he met Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar earlier this week at a hotel in Delhi.
On Wednesday, Khattar was in the national capital to meet President Droupadi Murmu to invite her as the chief guest for the inauguration of the Surajkund Mela. The annual fair showcasing regional and international crafts and traditions is scheduled to be held from 2 February to 19 February.
BJP state spokesperson Sanjay Sharma confirmed that Tanwar met the Haryana CM and his plans to join the BJP has been discussed, but he added that the final call is to be taken by Khattar.
Tanwar will be the second big leader of the AAP in Haryana to quit the party after former minister and four-time MLA Nirmal Singh bid adieu to the party along with his daughter Chitra Sarwara last week. The father-daughter duo returned to the Congress in an election year.
Earlier, AAP state president Sushil Gupta told a press conference in Chandigarh that if Tanwar joins the BJP, it is his own decision. The party has always given him the respect he deserved as a senior leader, the former Rajya Sabha member told the press briefing Saturday.
Contacted by The Print on his phone, Gupta said that he had learnt from the media reports that Tanwar plans to join the BJP though the AAP state campaign committee chairman has not talked to him about this.
Asked for how long Tanwar has not been in touch with him, Gupta said the AAP Campaign Committee chairman has not been attending party meetings or the party programmes for the past few days.
Jagbir Jognakhera, a Tanwar loyalist and AAP’s Kurukshetra district president who quit the party on 9 January, countered Gupta’s claims that the party respected Tanwar.
“When (Arvind) Kejriwal visited Chandigarh on 30 December, Tanwar reached with hundreds of his supporters. But he was not given time to address people. Nor did his picture figure in the party’s press releases. This was happening every day. How can a political leader who wants to contest an election hope to get people’s support when his party keeps ignoring him?” Jognakhera asked.
He said that on 9 January, AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sandeep Pathak visited Kurukshetra for a meeting. “I made all the arrangements for the event being the district head of the party. I sought an appointment with him for just two minutes, it was declined because the party leaders knew I would talk about Tanwar who had stopped attending the party’s events after 30 December. When Pathak left, I invited the media to my office and announced my resignation,” Jognakhera told The Print.
On Saturday, Khattar parried a question on his meeting with Tanwar by the media at Karnal. He told media persons that his responsibilities as CM are of such a nature that he keeps meeting people every day. “These people include those from my party and also political leaders, MLAs, MPs, ex-MLAs and ex-MPs from other parties,” he added.
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Rise & exit from Congress
Born to an army man father and a homemaker mother in Chimni village of Jhajjar district on 12 February 1976, Tanwar had his first brush with politics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University where he joined the Centre for Historical Studies for his Master’s degree and PhD in Indian medieval history.
Tanwar became secretary of the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), the student wing of the Congress, in 1999 and its president in 2003.
It was during his term as the NSUI secretary that he met his wife and the granddaughter of former president Shankar Dayal Sharma, Avantika Maken. The couple married in 2005, the year he was appointed the president of the Indian Youth Congress.
“We were both secretaries of the NSUI while Meenakshi Natrajan was its president,” Avantika once told The Print about her first meeting with Tanwar. Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi has played a key role in several of her key decisions, including her marriage, she had said.
Once considered as a member of Rahul Gandhi’s team, Tanwar met with his first major electoral success in 2009 when he was fielded from Sirsa parliamentary constituency. Though he contested this seat in 2014 and 2019, he lost on both occasions.
Months before the 2014 parliamentary polls, the Congress had appointed Tanwar the state unit chief in February.During the October 2014 assembly polls, Tanwar’s relations with the then CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda soured due to disagreement over the distribution of seats.
In October 2016, Tanwar was injured in an attack by a section of party workers when Congress supporters had gathered in New Delhi to welcome the then Congress president Rahul Gandhi on his return from his Kisan Yatra.
When Tanwar was admitted to a Delhi hospital, Khattar visited him to inquire about his well-being. After his discharge from the hospital, Tanwar has alleged that party workers owing allegiance to Hooda had attacked him.
His relations with Hooda, the party’s strongman in Haryana, was never restored after the episode. A little over a month before the 2019 assembly polls in Haryana, the Congress replaced Tanwar with Kumari Selja as the Pradesh Congress Committee chief in September.
A month later, Tanwar resigned from the Congress against the denial of tickets to his supporters and supported Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janta Party in the 2019 Haryana polls. One of his staunch supporters, Devender Babli (now a Haryana minister) contested on a JJP ticket and won from Tohana.
The Dalit leader went on to launch his own outfit Apna Bharat Morcha before joining Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress in November 2021 and then the AAP in April 2022.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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