Suspended by the BJP in 2015 over anti-party activities, Darbhanga MP Kirti Azad today joined the Congress. He was welcomed into the party fold by Congress president Rahul Gandhi.
Cricketer-turned-politician Azad joined the Congress today saying “I am very happy to leave the BJP, which is a ‘jumla party’. I served the BJP selflessly for 26 years but the current dispensation is all about slogans and corruption. I was feeling suffocated in the BJP. It was natural for me to come back home.”
Azad repeatedly referred to his Congress entry as “ghar wapsi” today, remembering his father Bhagwat Jha Azad, former Chief Minister of Bihar and a Congressman who first became the MP in 1952, when then PM Jawaharlal Nehru brought him into politics.
Azad slammed the BJP as a party that was “corrupt and bereft of internal democracy”, while showering praises on the Congress saying “The Congress contributed to the freedom struggle, it never believed in caste politics, its leaders sacrificed their lives for the unity of India.”
Asked what took him so long (26 years) to understand that he belonged to the Congress, Azad said, “I was stabbed in the back for raising corruption in the Delhi and District Cricket Association. I had 400 papers and yet no one was ready to listen to me. PM Modi had promised he would root out corruption but his promise turned out to be empty.”
Kirti Azad said he wanted to fight from Darbhanga, the seat he is representing for the third term in Lok Sabha but “would be open to whatever role Rahul Gandhi assigns him.” Azad was suspended by the BJP after he flagged alleged corruption in DDCA under the presidency of Arun Jaitley.