Former Uttarakhand forest minister Harak Singh Rawat's daughter-in-law, Anukriti Gusain has quit the Congress party over personal reasons. On Saturday, Gusain wrote a letter addressed to state Congress president stating that she was resigning from the primary membership of the party, reported news agency PTI.
Gusain, who is a former beauty pageant winner, had unsuccessfully contested the 2022 assembly polls from Lansdowne constituency on a Congress ticket soon after joining the party.
She won the Femina Miss India Grand International title in 2017.
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Gusain's resignation from the party came close on heels of severe indictment of her father-in-law by the Supreme Court in connection with the illegal felling of trees and constructions carried out during his tenure as forest minister in the Corbet Tiger Reserve.
Rawat was dropped from Pushkar Singh Dhami's cabinet and expelled from the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the 2022 assembly polls for anti-party activities.
Later, Rawat and Gusain soon joined the Congress party which gave latter a ticket to contest polls from Lansdowne.
Earlier on Sunday, Congress leader and sitting MLA from Uttarakhand, Rajendra Bhandari resigned from the party and shortly after joined the saffron camp ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.
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MLA from Badrinath assembly constituency, Bhandari, 60, joined the BJP in New Delhi in the presence of senior party leaders including Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and Union Minister Piyush Goyal.
Welcoming Bhandari to the party, Goyal said Bhandari's past service in the Badrinath constituency and cited Prime Minister Modi's anti-corruption efforts and development initiatives as motivating factors for Bhandari's decision to join the BJP.
Bhandari has, however, not elaborated on the reason as to why he left the Congress party.