New Delhi:

Former Union Minister Jitin Prasada, once part of Rahul Gandhi’s inner circle, crossed over to the BJP today in a huge blow to the Congress ahead of the Uttar Pradesh election next year.

The 47-year-old leader, who was the Congress’s top Brahmin face in UP, exits at a time the Congress is in meetings at its Delhi office to try and resolve a snowballing internal crisis in Punjab.

“BJP is the only real political party. It’s the only national party. Rest of the parties are regional. BJP and (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi only ones that can meet the challenges the country is facing now,” Jitin Prasada said at the BJP headquarters.

“I started feeling that I was in a party only surrounded by politics. I started feeling that I was not being able to contribute and do my work for the people. I wasn’t being able to work for the benefit of the people,” he said.

Mr Prasada is the second high-profile former Rahul Gandhi aide to defect to the BJP after Jyotiraditya Scindia left last year. Soon after his exit, there was speculation that another prominent “rebel”, Rajasthan leader Sachin Pilot, may also be on his way out.

Mr Prasada had denied rumours in 2019 that he was leaving the Congress. Sources say at the time Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had convinced him to stay.

“What’s the point in being a party if you can’t help the people you represent,” Mr Prasada said today.

His frustration with his party of 20 years was no secret; he was part of the “G-23” or group of 23 Congress leaders who had written to party chief Sonia Gandhi last year calling for sweeping reforms, collective decision-making and “full-time, visible leadership”.

Though the party talked about course-correction and appointed a panel, nothing really changed on the ground.

After that cataclysmic letter, Mr Prasada was among the few “dissenters” to be given any role at all; he was tasked with the Congress’s Bengal election campaign, which turned out to be a disaster.

He went public with his criticism of his own party’s decisions, including its alliance with the Indian Secular Front, led by a cleric.

“Alliance decisions are taken keeping in mind the best interests of the party and the workers. Now is the time for everyone to join hands and work towards strengthening the prospects of the Congress in the poll-bound states,” Mr Prasada tweeted.

The former Lok Sabha MP from Dhaurahra in Uttar Pradesh was one of the Congress’s top leaders in India’s most politically vital state, and is a big loss ahead of elections due in less than a year.

For the BJP, Jitin Prasada is an important acquisition at a time its government in UP, led by Yogi Adityanath, is battling criticism over the handling of Covid. Yogi Adityanath has been accused of ignoring Brahmins, who make up about 13 per cent of UP’s voters and are an influential chunk that has steadily gravitated from the Congress towards the BJP over the years.

In July last year, Mr Prasada launched a “Brahmin Chetna Parishad” to give a voice to the Brahmin community.

Lately, some in the UP Congress had turned against him. After the letter bomb, a Congress unit in the state called for action against the G-23, with special mention of Mr Prasada and his family’s strained history with the Gandhis.

His father and Congress veteran Jitendra Prasada had challenged Sonia Gandhi’s leadership of the party in 1999 and had contested against her for the post of party president. He died in 2002.

Jitin Prasada went on to become a minister twice in the Manmohan Singh-led Congress government and was considered one of Rahul Gandhi’s confidants at one point.