NEW DELHI, Apr 28:
In a setback to the Congress ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, senior leader Arvinder Singh Lovely has resigned as the party’s Delhi unit chief, citing the alliance with the AAP as one of the reasons.
He said the Delhi Congress unit was against the alliance but the party high command went ahead with it.
In his resignation letter sent to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Saturday, Lovely also said that he found himself “handicapped” as all unanimous decisions taken by senior Delhi unit leaders have been “unilaterally vetoed” by AICC Delhi in-charge Deepak Babria.
This comes days after former Delhi Minister and AICC member Rajkumar Chauhan resigned from the party following an altercation with Babria.
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Reacting to the development, the Delhi BJP on Sunday said this “explosion” was set in motion when the Congress started naming candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, while the AAP said this is an internal matter of the Congress.
In his letter to Kharge, Lovely said, “It is with a heavy heart that I write the present letter to you finding myself handicapped and unable to continue as the president of the Delhi party unit.”
“I had gratefully accepted the role as the DPCC president with the sole objective of supporting the local Congress party workers with whom I have an extremely close connection and life-long association.
“However, since I cannot protect the interests of the party workers, I see no reason to continue in the said post. Therefore, with great regret and an extremely leaden heart, I, Arvinder Singh Lovely, do hereby tender my resignation from the post of DPCC President,” he said.
A Minister in the Sheila Dikshit government, Lovely was appointed as the Delhi Congress chief in August last year.
Lovely said even though the Delhi Congress unit was against the alliance with the AAP, he publicly backed it and made sure that the entire unit “fell in line with the high command’s final order”.
He said that he even withdrew his name as a potential candidate for the Lok Sabha polls in the interest of the party and so that other senior leaders could get tickets.
“The Delhi Congress unit was against an alliance with a party which was formed on the sole basis of levelling false, fabricated and malafide corruption charges against the Congress party… Half of the Cabinet Ministers (of the party) are presently in jail on corruption charges.
“Despite that, the party (Congress) made a decision to ally with the AAP in Delhi. We respected the party’s final decision… I even went to the extent of visiting Kejriwal’s residence on the night of his arrest along with Subash Chopra and Sandeep Dikshit, despite the same being against my position on the matter,” he said. (PTI)
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