Hours after announcing his resignation from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rahul Kaswan, the sitting MP from Rajasthan’s Churu, officially joined the Congress on Monday in the presence of party chief Mallikarjun Kharge.

Earlier in the day, Kaswan shared a post on social media, announcing his decision to resign from the BJP and as a Member of Parliament of the Lok Sabha. “Due to political reasons, at this very moment today, I am resigning from the primary membership of the Bharatiya Janata Party and from the post of Member of Parliament.”

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“I express my gratitude to BJP national president JP Nadda, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Amit Shah, who gave me the opportunity to serve the Churu Lok Sabha family for 10 years,” he said in a post on X.

The Churu MP, who was denied a BJP ticket for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, has also stepped down as a Lok Sabha MP.

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“My entire family was working with honesty and dedication in the region, but a time came where I felt that my voice was not being heard in the BJP. I felt that I would suffocate if I could not raise the issues of my farmer brothers,” Kaswan said after was formally inducted into the party by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.

In its list of candidates announced for the state, the BJP chose Paralympic gold medalist Devendra Jhajharia as its candidate for Churu in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, replacing the two-time MP Kaswan. Kaswan’s shift to Congress occurred shortly after the BJP unveiled its candidates for 15 out of 25 Lok Sabha seats in Rajasthan.

The Churu parliamentary constituency has been a BJP stronghold with the Kaswan family securing victories consecutively since the 2004 general elections. BJP leader Ram Singh Kaswan claimed the seat in 2004 and 2009, while his son Rahul Kaswan secured it for the saffron party in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

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Kaswan’s exit from the BJP comes a day after Brijendra Singh, the Lok Sabha MP from Hisar in Haryana, resigned from the BJP and joined Congress, citing political and ideological differences on issues ranging from farmers to Agniveers to the wrestlers’ protest.