Days after three independent MLAs withdrew support to the ruling BJP in Haryana and joined the Congress, Kailasho Saini, a two-time former MP from Kurukshetra, quit the saffron party and joined the Opposition party in the presence of former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda in Rohtak on Sunday.
Kailasho is considered a prominent OBC leader in Kurukshetra district. He also announced that she would campaign for the INDIA bloc-supported Aam Aadmi Party candidate in Kurukshetra, Sushil Gupta, in the May 25 Lok Sabha election.
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She was elected from the Kurukshetra Lok Sabha seat in 1998 and 1999 on the tickets of the Haryana Lok Dal (Rashtriya) and the Indian National Lok Dal, respectively. The INLD was earlier known as the Haryana Lok Dal (Rashtriya). She has also been the chairperson of the zila parishad in Kurukshetra.
After joining the Congress, Kailasho said, “I joined the Congress under the leadership of Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who respected every section of society during his 10-year rule in the state. I had thought (of switching sides) for a long time. A democratic party like the Congress exists nowhere else in the world.”
Asked for her reasons for leaving the BJP, the former parliamentarian said, “In the BJP, there are no concern for the public. There is a conspiracy to change the Constitution. The farmers were beaten up with the sticks (during the peasants’ stir).”
Welcoming her, Hooda said nearly 40 former MLAs and MPs had already joined the Congress in Haryana, apart from recent support the three independent MLAs offered to the party. “The BJP government is in a minority in Haryana and it should resign on moral grounds. We have given a memorandum to the governor urging him to dissolve the Assembly and hold Assembly polls,” he added.
Kailasho has been active in Kurukshetra’s politics for nearly three decades. She contested the 1996 Lok Sabha election in Kurukshetra on the ticket of the Social Action Party, but Haryana Vikas Party candidate O P Jindal won the poll battle. In 1998, she contested the election on the ticket of the Haryana Lok Dal (Rashtriya) and defeated the Congress’s Kuldeep Sharma. As the INLD candidate, Kailasho defeated O P Jindal of the Congress in the 1999 Lok Sabha election from the constituency. Jindal’s son Naveen Jindal is the BJP candidate for the upcoming Lok Sabha election.
Kailasho joined the Congress in 2009, when Hooda was the chief minister. However, she lost two Assembly elections (2009 and 2014) from the Ladwa constituency. Ahead of the 2019 Assembly polls, she quit the Congress and joined the BJP.