Former Congress MP and party’s Haryana chief Ashok Tanwar, once considered close to Rahul Gandhi, joined the Aam Aadmi Party on Monday.

Tanwar, 46, has led Congress’s student and youth wings as well as its Haryana unit before quitting over differences with the then chief minister Bhupinder Hooda. His induction is the most prominent among a series of defections from the Congress and the BSP to the AAP in the state.

AAP’s push in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh comes after it swept Punjab and emerged as the largest party in the Chandigarh municipal corporation.

In the previous Lok Sabha polls, AAP drew a blank in Haryana despite its alliance with Dushyant Chautala-led Jannayak Janta Party, which later aligned with the BJP to form the state government in 2019.

Tanwar, a Dalit leader and the son-in-law of assassinated Congress MP Lalit Maken, met AAP leader and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal here on Monday.

After the meeting, he tweeted: “My commitment to serve people is sacrosanct! As a step forward in my pursuit of public service, I am glad to commit myself to Aam Aadmi Party, which has stood for honest politics and robust governance… Through sustained delivery of public good, transparent governance & ensuring welfare of those at bottom run of society, the @AamAadmiParty has emerged as a credible alternative in Indian politics...”

Ajay Maken, brother of the late Congress MP, is arguably the strongest opponent of AAP within the Congress establishment in Delhi.

AAP sources said the success of their service delivery and ideologically agnostic politics was likely to draw more leaders from the Left-leaning fringe of the faction-ridden Congress in these states. While scores of junior Congress functionaries have joined AAP in Himachal this month in the wake of infighting in the party, AAP has not been very successful in wooing CPM leaders in the state who are seen as less vulnerable to poaching by the BJP.

Polls to Haryana, Himachal, Gujarat, Karnataka, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura are due early next year. AAP is focussing on the first four and launched its campaign in Gujarat last weekend. Delhi minister Satyendar Jain has been made in-charge of Himachal, and former Karnataka additional DGP Bhaskar Rao joined the party on Monday. The party’s Haryana expansion has been helmed by Sushil Gupta, a Rajya Sabha MP from Delhi and a former Congress leader. Gupta has been using his old Congress contacts to build AAP in the state.

After the Punjab results, Gupta told reporters: “After the Punjab elections, there is a boil and undercurrent in the politics of Haryana. For 75 years these politicians ran the country in the name of caste and religion. This is not going to happen anymore. Development-oriented politics with a knack for work is going to be introduced in Haryana very soon and the Delhi model will take over the state.”

While the Rashtriya Lok Dal across the Yamuna found limited success in converting agrarian discontent into votes in the recent Uttar Pradesh polls, AAP is vying for the same vote bank in Haryana. A party functionary in Haryana said: “Where farmers see a credible alternative with support both in rural and urban areas who can deliver governance and protect their interests better than existing parties, they will shift like they did in Punjab. Leaders with a clean image like Ashok ji will catalyse this process.”

Speculation is rife that Haryana bureaucrat and anti-corruption crusader Ashok Khemka may also join the party.