Priyanka Chaturvedi, one of the Congress's most high-profile spokespersons, quit her party of 10 years and joined the Shiv Sena in less than 24 hours. Hours after she tweeted her resignation letter to Congress president Rahul Gandhi, she surfaced alongside Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and his son Aditya Thackeray.

"I gave ten years of my life to a political party at the end of which I felt extremely let down for not standing up on issues which are important for women's rights," said the 39-year-old, who gave the first hint of a rift with her party on Wednesday, when she tweeted about "lumpen goons" getting preference in the Congress over those who had "given their sweat and blood".

She was referring to the Congress's decision to take back a group of party workers who had been sacked after they allegedly manhandled her in September in Uttar Pradesh's Mathura when she was addressing a press conference.

The workers were reportedly taken back with a nod from Jyotiraditya Scindia, who, along with Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, is in charge of the party's campaign in UP.

Their return was announced in a letter from the UP Congress's "disciplinary committee", which was tweeted by a journalist and then retweeted by Priyanka Chaturvedi.

Last evening, she handed in her resignation letter to Rahul Gandhi. "In the last few weeks, certain things have convinced me that my services are not valued in the organization and that I have reached the end of the road. At the same time I also feel that the more time I spend in the organization will be at the cost of my own self-respect and dignity," she wrote.