Actor-turned-politician Khushboo Sundar on Monday quit the Congress and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the 2021 Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, PTI reported. The Congress removed her from the position of All India Congress Committee spokesperson with “immediate effect”, after she submitted her resignation letter to party chief Sonia Gandhi.

Sundar met BJP National President JP Nadda after joining the party. “If the nation has to move forward, then we need somebody like Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take the country in the right direction,” she told reporters, NDTV reported.

In her resignation letter, Sundar said people who have no connectivity with the ground reality were dictating terms in the party. “Few elements seated at higher level within the party, people who have no connectivity with the ground reality or public recognition are dictating terms and people like me who wanted to work for the party sincerely, are being pushed and suppressed,” she wrote.

After a long and thorough “thought process” over a period of time, the popular Tamil actor said she decided to end her association with the Congress.

Sundar, who was with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu, joined the Congress in 2014. “I came into the fold of INC at the time when it was at its lowest, being defeated in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections,” she said in her resignation letter. “I did not walk into the party for any monetary gains, name or fame.”

Sundar travelled to New Delhi from Chennai on Sunday, but refused to comment on whether she was joining the saffron party.