NEW DELHI: Congress MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi, who resigned from the Haryana assembly on Wednesday, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday.
The former Adampur MLA joined the saffron party in the presence of Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar at party headquarters in Delhi.
Bishnoi was expelled by the Congress from all party positions for cross-voting in the June Rajya Sabha polls.
Accompanied by his wife Renuka Bishnoi, he had submitted his resignation to speaker Gian Chand Gupta, who accepted it. Immediately after his resignation, Bishnoi challenged Congress functionary Bhupinder Singh Hooda to contest from Adampur.
Bishnoi, who quit Congress formally "taking into account his own feelings and those of supporters", said the reason for his leaving the party was that it had deviated from its traditional principles "due to vested interests of a few".
The four-time MLA and two-time MP had been sulking ever since the Congress had ignored him for the post of its Haryana unit chief during a revamp earlier this year.