Lucknow . In Uttar Pradesh (UP), where all political parties have started preparing for the assembly elections to be held in the beginning of 2022 and are busy arranging things, the Congress in UP is busy fighting by itself. The infighting within the party is in full swing. After a meeting of the Congress Working Committee last week, where a letter written by 23 senior party leaders sparked a huge controversy, Congress leaders are now targeting ‘dissidents’ to show their allegiance to the party high command. Huh.
Former Union Minister Jitin Prasad was first targeted. The Lakhimpur Kheri unit passed a resolution to sign the controversial letter demanding his expulsion from the party.
DCC chief Prahlad Patel claimed that it was passed under pressure from an official of the state-level Congress leadership.
Instead of extinguishing the flames of revolt, the UPCC leadership has deliberately kept silence on the issue. An unverified audio clip of a conversation between two local Congress leaders revealed that the protest against Prasad was carried out at the behest of a senior party leader and some laborers were hired to raise slogans.
UPCC President Ajay Kumar Lallu, interestingly defending the party in the matter, said that some party workers want to convey their feelings to the party high command.
Shortly thereafter, former Congress MLC Naseeb Pathan put out a video message seeking to oust veteran leader Ghulam Nabi Azad from the party. Pathan said, “As they have broken the discipline of the party, they should be ‘freed’ and expelled from the party.”
Naseeb Pathan, incidentally, was once one of the staunch loyalists of Azad in the UP Congress.
Now, Nirmal Khatri, former chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee, has accused Azad of forcing the party to form the Congress-Samajwadi Party alliance in the 2017 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. In the 2017 assembly elections, the Congress could win only seven seats.
Khatri took aim at Azad on social media, saying, “As far as I know, Rahul Gandhi was also opposed to the coalition, but Azad’s obstinate and defeatist political thinking probably kept quiet. His political science principles are coalition politics Are focused on. ”
The former UPCC chief said, “Azad said in his interview that the Congress Working Committee (CWC) has not been elected for the last 23 years. The question is when in these 23 years he was himself a nominated member of the committee, Why didn’t they raise the question then? ”
Khatri said, “I also feel that elections should be held at every level. But, leaders like you believed that the method of nomination is better.”
In addition, a group of Youth Congress leaders is already targeting the state leadership over the party’s failure on an inclusive basis.
These leaders, in their WhatsApp group, accused the UPCC chief of ignoring the upper castes and promoting OBCs in the party.
These leaders also claim that Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi is misleading Vadra about the status of their ally UP Congress.
Meanwhile, the party has not shown any interest in canceling the expulsion of 10 senior leaders, although it is notable that the interim president of the Congress, Sonia Gandhi, recently canceled the expulsion of senior party leader Shakeel Ahmed.
Significantly, Ahmed was expelled from the Congress last year after contesting the Lok Sabha elections from Madhubani in Bihar as an independent candidate. However, he is back in the Congress now.
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