AICC OBC wing chief Capt Ajay Yadav quits as rumblings in Haryana Congress grow louder

“I have sent my resignation letter to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge from (the post of ) chairman, AICC OBC department, and also from (the) primary membership of the Indian National Congress,” Yadav said in a post on X.

He said the decision to quit the Congress was “really hard” as his family had “70 years of association” with the party. He said his father late Rao Abhey Singh was elected as an MLA in 1952 and “thereafter I continued with family tradition but (I) am disillusioned with the party high command for treating me shabbily after Sonia Gandhi left the post of Congress president”.

It was not yet confirmed if Kharge has accepted Yadav’s resignation, but sources close to the veteran leader said that it was likely that he will be joining the BJP in the coming days. “His son Chiranjeev Rao, who unsuccessfully contested the Assembly elections from Rewari, may also move on,” a senior leader told The Indian Express.

While there were no immediate reactions from the Congress, the BJP hit out at the grand old party. The ruling party’s IT cell head Amit Malviya, in an X post, said, “Capt Ajay Singh Yadav…criticised Rahul Gandhi and Congress leadership for not giving adequate representation to SC, ST and OBCs in the CWC and CEC. He has now resigned. Forced?. Rahul Gandhi who keeps talking about caste, can’t even give respect to OBC leaders in Congress.”

BJP national spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla too accused the Congress of being allegedly an anti-OBC and anti-Dalit party, and demanded that Rahul Gandhi must tell the country why Yadav was “insulted” during the Haryana Assembly polls.

Yadav’s resignation comes six months after another Congress veteran and then Tosham MLA, Kiran Choudhry, and her daughter and former MP Shruti Choudhry crossed over to the BJP fold. Shruti subsequently won the Assembly elections from Tosham and was sworn-in as a minister in Saini’s Cabinet Thursday.

A known detractor of senior Congress leader and ex-CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Yadav had hit out at the party’s state leadership over the electoral debacle, saying that the tussle for becoming the CM even before getting the people’s mandate was a “big blunder”.

Yadav had said the party should introspect for its failure in southern Haryana, especially Gurgaon, Rewari, Mahendragarh and Faridabad where it won just one seat as against 10 by the BJP.

Yadav had won five consecutive terms from Rewari. In 2019, party had fielded his son Chiranjeev, who won. This time, however, Chiranjeev lost to the BJP’s Laxman Singh Yadav by 28,769 votes. Apart from the Congress leaders, the RJD’s Tej Pratap Yadav had conducted road shows for Chiranjeev, who is married to RJD supremo Lalu Yadav’s daughter.

After the loss, an angry Ajay Yadav had said that his post had been reduced to little more than a “jhunjhuna (a toy)”. He also questioned why the Ahirwal region has no representation in the Congress Working Committee (CWC), Central Election Committee (CEC), as AICC general secretaries or even in Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee (HPCC).

“The result is that we got wiped out in Gurgaon, Mahendragarh, Rewari and Faridabad… If you don’t bring OBCs into the mainstream within the party, it sends the wrong message,” Yadav had said, adding that even his photograph was missing from party posters. “What kind of an OBC wing chairman have you made me?” Yadav asked.

A science and law graduate, Yadav was inducted in the Army as Second Lieutenant in 1988 and resigned seven years later, when he was a Captain. A native of Saharanwas village in Rewari, he then joined politics and contested the 1991 Assembly elections from Rewari. He won and retained the seat subsequently in 1996, 2000, 2005 and 2009. In the 2014 Assembly polls, Yadav finished a distant third with BJP’s then candidate Randhir Singh Kapriwas winning the seat.

Yadav had been a Minister of Power, Forests and Environment in the Hooda-led Congress government. He also held portfolios of Irrigation, Revenue and Elections. In February 2022, he was appointed as the chairman of the AICC’s OBC wing.