Five-time MLA and former Haryana minister Ajay Singh Yadav resigned from the Congress on Thursday, days after the party lost the state elections to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Yadav said he was “disillusioned with the party high command for treating me shabbily after Sonia Gandhi left the post of Congress President”. Gandhi quit the post in 2017, returning to it briefly in 2019.

“I have sent my resignation letter to Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge’s ji from Chairman Committee AICC [All India Congress Committee], OBC [Other Backward Class] Department and also from the primary membership of Indian National Congress Party,” Yadav said in a post on X.

The 65-year-old described his resignation as a “hard decision” due to his family’s 70-year association with the Congress, which began with his late father becoming an MLA in 1952.

Yadav is the third prominent Congress leader in Haryana to quit the party in recent years, reported PTI.

Earlier this year, four-time former MLA Kiran Choudhry, whose father-in-law Bansi Lal served as the chief minister of Haryana three times, defected to the BJP and is now serving as an MP in the Rajya Sabha.

Four-time MLA and former Congress Working Committee member Kuldeep Bishnoi quit the party in 2022 and joined the BJP.

Yadav is seen as a rival of Congress leader and former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. He had recently criticised the Congress party’s state unit for alleged infighting ahead of the Assembly elections.

He had called for the Congress to introspect its weak showing in South Haryana, better known as the Ahirwal region, where it secured just one seat out of 14, compared to the BJP’s 10. His son Chiranjeev Rao lost from Rewari seat to BJP’s Laxman Yadav by more than 28,000 votes.

Yadav also said that the Ahirwal region lacked representation in the Congress Working Committee, Central Election Committee and the Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee.

The BJP won the Haryana Assembly election by clinching 48 seats in the 90-member Assembly. This was an increase from the 40 seats it won in 2019. The Congress won 37 seats.