Kuldeep Bishnoi lambasts Congress after his expulsion; 'Had they acted this swiftly...'

After his expulsion following the Rajya Sabha election twist, Haryana MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi launched an unsparing attack on the Congress party saying that it would not have been in such 'dire states' if it had acted this swiftly and strongly on other critical opportunities. Taking to Twitter, Bishnoi accused the grand-old-party of having 'rules for some leaders and exceptions for others' and asserted that his decision to vote for BJP-backed Kartikeya Sharma had been taken after he 'listened to his soul'.

A day after losing the Rajya Sabha polls in Haryana due to cross-voting, Congress cracked the whip and shunned its legislator Kuldeep Bishnoi from all party positions. The Haryana Congress stated that the action was being taken because the Adampur MLA did not vote for party candidate Ajay Maken and cross-voted in favour of Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma, who was backed by the ruling BJP-JJP.

"The Congress president has expelled Kuldeep Bishnoi from all his present party positions, including the post of special invitee of the Congress Working Committee, with immediate effect," a statement from AICC General Secretary K C Venugopal said.

Ajay Maken suffers high-profile loss in Rajya Sabha

In a nail-biting contest that reached the doors of the Election Commission, BJP's Krishan Lal Panwar and the saffron party-backed Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma won the two Rajya Sabha seats from Haryana. Congress' Ajay Maken lost to Sharma by a narrow margin after his own party MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi voted for the BJP-backed independent candidate in what Bishnoi described as a calling of his 'inner soul'.

Speaking to reporters about the voting in the Rajya Sabha elections, Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar shared that Congress got 29 votes, while Kartikeya Sharma got 29.65 votes. Explaining Sharma's vote, he said that the media baron got 23 votes, while 6.65 votes of Krishan Panwar were transferred to him as per the preferential voting system, which made him victorious.

Sources have claimed that there was a divide in the Haryana Congress over Ajay Maken's candidature as several MLAs saw the senior Congress leader as an 'outsider' and believed that candidates belonging to Haryana must be elected. 

Image: Twitter/@bishnoimukesh_