{"id":309547,"date":"2019-02-18T07:47:53","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T07:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=309547"},"modified":"2019-02-18T07:47:53","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T07:47:53","slug":"former-bjp-leader-kirti-azad-joins-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/former-bjp-leader-kirti-azad-joins-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"Former BJP leader Kirti Azad joins Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\" wp-image-309548 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/kirti-azad-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"512\" height=\"341\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2019\/02\/kirti-azad-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2019\/02\/kirti-azad-768x513.jpg 768w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2019\/02\/kirti-azad-696x465.jpg 696w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2019\/02\/kirti-azad-629x420.jpg 629w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2019\/02\/kirti-azad.jpg 813w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Former BJP leader Kirti Azad, who was suspended by the party, joined the\u00a0Congress\u00a0party on Monday in the presence of\u00a0party president\u00a0Rahul Gandhi.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Kirti Azad made the announcement on Twitter\u00a0and added that he felicitated Rahul Gandhi in the traditional Mithila style.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cGood morning today 18th February I will be joining @INCIndia in front of @RahulGandhi ji and my press conference will be held at AICC headquarters 24 Akbar Road in Delhi at 1 p.m,\u201d he tweeted.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cToday in front of Shri Rahul Gandhi I joined the Congress I felicitated him in traditional Mithila style,\u201d he added.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Kirti Azad was supposed to join the Congress earlier, but that was postponed after the terrorist attack in Pulwama, in which at least 40 CRPF jawans were martyred.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cMet @RahulGandhi ji it was rightly decided that in mark of respect to the martyred soldiers of Pulwama my joining the @INCIndia will now take place on 18th February we will be in state of mourning for 3 days country is bigger than a person or party and soldiers are supreme Ameen,\u201d Kirti Azad had tweeted.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Kirti Azad is a former India cricketer and the MP from Darbangha in Bihar. He was suspended from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for anti-party activities.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former BJP leader Kirti Azad, who was suspended by the party, joined the\u00a0Congress\u00a0party on Monday in the presence of\u00a0party president\u00a0Rahul Gandhi. Kirti Azad made the announcement on Twitter\u00a0and added that he felicitated Rahul Gandhi in the traditional Mithila style. \u201cGood morning today 18th February I will be joining @INCIndia in front of @RahulGandhi ji and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":309548,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1801],"tags":[236,10895,579],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309549,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309547\/revisions\/309549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/309548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}