Gurugram: Bidding farewell to four decades of association with the Congress, former Haryana minister Kiran Choudhry Wednesday joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) along with daughter Shruti.
A five-time MLA, Kiran Choudhry (69) is the wife of late Surender Singh and daughter-in-law of former chief minister late Bansi Lal, viewed by many as the ‘architect’ of modern-day Haryana. Kiran Choudhry is currently the MLA from Tosham seat, while her daughter Shruti is a former Member of Parliament from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh.
Having resigned from primary membership of the Congress the previous day, the mother-daughter duo joined the BJP at the party headquarters in Delhi in the presence of Union minister Manohar Lal Khattar, Haryana CM Nayab Singh Saini, and BJP national general secretary Tarun Chugh. Kiran Choudhry’s younger sister, Anuradha Chaudhary, a former MP and minister in the Uttar Pradesh government, was also present.
Shruti Choudhry was seen touching Khattar’s feet after he handed her the joining letter.
Khattar said he felt though Kiran Choudhry’s body may have been in the Congress when he was Haryana CM, her soul was with the BJP. “Whenever we met in the Haryana State Assembly though we faced each other as opponents after a while we would understand what we wanted to convey to each other,” he said, amid laughter from the audience.
Kiran Choudhry described Manohar Lal Khattar as her “bade bhai” (elder brother).
In her first remarks since joining the BJP, she also took aim at Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Bhupinder Singh Hooda, alleging that he discouraged the growth of any leader in the Haryana Congress. Kiran Choudhry had made a similar allegation in her resignation letter to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and shared on social media, where she wrote that the Haryana Congress is being run as a personal “fiefdom”.
“It is most unfortunate that the Congress party in Haryana is being run as a personal fiefdom leaving no space for sincere voices like mine, who have been stifled, humiliated and conspired against in a most well-orchestrated and systematic manner, thus, significantly hampering my diligent efforts to represent our people and uphold values I have always stood for,” she wrote.
Shruti Choudhry in her resignation letter said the state unit centres around “one person” who compromised the interests of the party for his own “selfish” and “petty interests”.
While she did not name Hooda, the contents of the letter left little doubt that it was aimed at the former chief minister. “Congress party in Haryana has, unfortunately, become centred around one person who compromised the interests of the party for own selfish and petty interests and it is time for me to move on so that I may continue to uphold the interests of my people and values that I stand for,” she wrote.
Sources close to her told ThePrint that Kiran Choudhry was upset with the Congress for denying Shruti a ticket to contest Lok Sabha polls from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh, which she represented from 2009 to 2014, and contested from unsuccessfully in 2014 and 2019.
Political journey of Kiran Choudhry
Daughter of war veteran Brigadier Atma Singh Ahlawat — hailed as the ‘founding father’ of Army’s 17 Kumaon Regiment — and Sarla Devi of Gochhi village in Jhajjar, Kiran Choudhry was born in 1955 in Delhi Cantonment.
A law graduate, she married former Haryana chief minister Bansi Lal’s son Surender Singh, a two-time Lok Sabha MP, one-time Rajya Sabha MP and two-time MLA from the family bastion of Tosham. When Bansi Lal launched his Haryana Vikas Party (HVP) in 1991, Surender Singh joined him, while Kiran Choudhry remained with the Congress.
After Bansi Lal’s HVP-BJP coalition government fell in 1999 due to the withdrawal of support by the BJP, Surender returned to the Congress. He was subsequently appointed a minister in the Hooda government in 2005. However, days later, Surender died in a chopper crash on 31 March, 2005, along with fellow minister and industrialist O.P. Jindal.
The circumstances forced Kiran Choudhry to shift her political base from Delhi to Haryana. She won the by-election held for the Tosham assembly seat that same year and retained the seat in 2009, 2014 and 2019. Though she later served as a minister in both Hooda governments (2005, 2009), she never enjoyed a good relationship with him.
Initially, Kiran Choudhry traversed the state to establish a connection with her late husband’s supporters. But her influence was restricted to her own Tosham assembly segment or, to some extent, to neighbouring assembly segments in Bhiwani district.
She was named the Leader of the Congress Legislative Party (CLP) by the party leadership after the 2014 assembly elections.
During her current term in the assembly, she allied with senior Congress leaders Kumari Selja and Randeep Surjewala to constitute a grouping popularly referred to as the ‘SRK’ camp in political circles — a combination of the initials of the three leaders.
What seems to have been the last straw for her is the Congress denying her daughter Shruti the ticket to contest from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh and instead fielding Rao Dan Singh, a Hooda loyalist, from the seat.
While Kiran Choudhry visited all nine assembly segments of the constituency with Shruti, she said there in a rather sarcastic manner that she would support Rao Dan Singh more than he supported Shruti in the last three elections. During Rahul Gandhi’s rally at Mahendragarh last month, Kiran Choudhry was seen sparring with Rao Dan Singh on stage.
Rao Dan Singh lost to BJP’s Dharambir Singh by a margin of more than 41,000 votes.
Bansi Lal & his dynasty
Born on 26 August 1927, Bansi Lal became the third CM of Haryana in May 1968 — an office he occupied for two terms, before Indira Gandhi elevated him as defence minister in 1975. He held this office till 1977 and was also a minister in Rajiv Gandhi’s government.
Bansi Lal occupied the CM’s chair again from June 1986 till June 1987, and May 1996 till July 1999, when the BJP pulled the rug from under his feet by withdrawing support and extending it to Om Prakash Chautala’s INLD.
Throughout his innings in politics, Bansi Lal represented the Tosham assembly seat for five terms and the Bhiwani assembly seat once from 2000 to 2005. He also won the Bhiwani Lok Sabha seat in 1980, 1984 and 1989. He was also a Rajya Sabha MP for two terms.
His elder son Ranbir Singh Mahendra was more into cricket than politics during his father’s active years while younger son Surender was actively associated with Bansi Lal right from his early years in public life.
Surender Singh was elected to the Bhiwani Lok Sabha seat in 1996 and 1998. He remained a Rajya Sabha MP from 1986 to 1992 and was elected to Haryana Vidhan Sabha in 1982 and 2005. On both occasions, he was made a minister — in the Bhajan Lal and Hooda governments, respectively. However, his ministerial term was cut short on both occasions.
In the first, he resigned within a year over differences with the CM. In the second, his death in a chopper crash cut short his ministerial stint to just 26 days.
Surender Singh’s wife Kiran Choudhry was elected to the Delhi Assembly in 1998 after having lost the assembly elections once in 1993 and remained Deputy Speaker of the House from 1998 to 2003. She entered Haryana politics after her husband’s death in 2005.
Their daughter Shruti won the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh Lok Sabha seat, as the Bhiwani seat was renamed after delimitation by adding the Ahirwal areas of Mahendragarh to it, in 2009, and unsuccessfully contested from this seat in 2014 and 2019.
Born on 3 October, 1975, in New Delhi, Shruti studied at the Convent of Jesus & Mary followed by DPS, RK Puram. She graduated from Dyal Singh College, Delhi University, in 1996 and secured a degree in law from BR Ambedkar University, Agra in 1999.
Ranbir Singh Mahendra remained honorary secretary of the Haryana Cricket Association for some years before he was elected as BCCI president in 2004, a post he held for almost one year. He entered electoral politics after Hooda became CM and won from Mundhal in 2005. After Mundhal assembly seat was abolished in delimitation, he unsuccessfully contested from Badhra in Bhiwani on a Congress ticket in 2009, 2014, and 2019.
Now, Mahendra’s son Anirudh Chaudhary, treasurer of the BCCI, plans to contest the Haryana assembly elections scheduled for later this year.
Bansi Lal’s son-in-law Somvir Singh Sheoran, too, was elected to Haryana Vidhan Sabha on an HVP ticket in 1996, but lost his bid for re-election in 2000. He won again in 2005, on a Congress ticket and unsuccessfully contested assembly elections in 2009, 2014 and 2019.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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