New Delhi: Former Congress Chief in Haryana and Lok Sabha MP Ashok Tanwar is all set to join the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday in Delhi. The move comes post the AAP’s sweeping victory over Congress in Punjab assembly polls. Tanwar had joined the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in November 2021.
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. He then alleged that Congress has drifted away from its basic ideology. In the 2019 Haryana Assembly elections, Tanwar had extended his support to Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) and campaigned against Congress.
Tanwar, incidentally, after quitting Congress has been on a party-hopping spree while also launching his own party ‘Apna Bharat Morcha’ in February 2021, before joining TMC. 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.
During the launch of his party, he had quoted cartoonist RK Laxman and said, ‘The real Congress will be reduced in size through constant splits’. Tanwar had called Laxman’s words a reality of today’s Congress while adding that his party will work with a three-pillared approach of dialogue, debate, and discussion.
Notably, as a part of Congress, Tanwar held key positions such as President of the Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee, and secretary of the All India Congress Committee. He was also a former president of the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) and was the youngest to head the Youth Congress. Tanwar rose to prominence when he fought the election for the president of the students’ union of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). 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.
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