New Delhi, Oct 20 (PTI): Rita Bahuguna Joshi, a second-generation Congress leader who once headed the party’s Uttar Pradesh unit, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday.

Rita, 67,the daughter of late Congress veteran Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna, resigned from the state legislature on Thursday to join the BJP in the presence of its president, Amit Shah.

She is said to have been unhappy with the Congress leadership for projecting former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit as the chief ministerial candidate in Uttar Pradesh, where assembly elections are due early next year.

Rita criticised Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for his 'khoon-ki-dalali' barb at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the surgical strikes that the army carried out across the Line of Control in Kashmir after the September 28 attack on an army camp in Uri.

”India is fighting terrorism and the Modi government has given the army a free hand. Besides valour of the army, the government's strong leadership was also behind the surgical strikes,” she said.

”Along with the nation, I too was happy. The whole world accepted India's arguments behind the strikes. Congress, however, behaved like a small party and went on to question it. The whole nation was upset with a phrase like 'khoon like dalali',” she said.

She said the decision to quit the Congress has not been easy, as she has spent 24 years out of 27 years of her political career in the Congress and only 10 months in Samajwadi Party.

“However, I took it in the interest of the nation and the state (UP),” she said.

The BJP expects her presence to help it consolidate Brahmin voters as it aims to capture power in the state following a gap of over 15 years, during which the ruling Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party have been in the power by turns.