Hours after stepping down from the post of the Delhi Congress chief, Arvinder Singh Lovely on Sunday clarified that he is not joining any party. Lovely said he has not resigned from the primary membership of the Congress and only stepped down from the post, citing the alliance with the AAP as one of the reasons.
Addressing the media after tendering his resignation, Lovely thanked the Congress workers and senior leaders who came to support him and said, “Mentioning the principles and the pain felt by the Congress workers, I have resigned from the post of Delhi Congress chief. I want to thank the Congress workers who came to meet me.”
He also clarified that he has not resigned from the party, but just from his post as Delhi Congress chief and said he is not joining any other party.
“The reason for the resignation is not because I didn’t get the ticket…This was because of the principals,” he added.
His clarification came after Congress ex-MLA Asif Mohammad Khan claimed that the BJP would field Lovely from the East Delhi constituency, replacing Harsh Malhotra.
Lovely said his resignation reflected the pain of Congress workers saddened by the fact that the “ideals they had been fighting for during the last seven to eight years” were being compromised.
“We are fighting the elections together but never did the Congress workers say that we are giving a clean chit to them or giving them credit for building schools and hospitals, which is far from the reality,” Lovely said, referring to the party’s tie-up with the AAP in Delhi for the Lok Sabha polls.
Lovely’s Resignation As Delhi Congress Chief
In a setback to the Congress ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, senior leader Arvinder Singh Lovely resigned from the post of party’s Delhi unit chief. In his resignation letter sent to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Lovely 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.
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.
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.
Lovely also criticised Congress North East Delhi candidate Kanhaiya Kumar for heaping praise on Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who is behind bars in a money laundering case.
“The candidate from North East Delhi has also been giving media bytes falsely praising the Delhi CM, in direct contravention of the party line and the local party workers’ beliefs. In direct contradiction to the true factual position and the misery of Delhi Citizens, he endorsed the false propaganda of AAP in regard to the supposed works done by them in education, health, road and electricity sectors,” he said.
“Such ill-thought and factually incorrect statements have not gone down well” with the Delhi Congress unit since “the local party workers had an inherent understanding that the alliance was not done in appreciation of AAP’s false propaganda of the development of Delhi,” he said.
In fact, he added, the alliance was a “compromise” to improve the chances of victory of the Congress in the Lok Sabha polls.
The Congress and the AAP are constituents of the INDIA bloc formed by opposition parties to take on the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections. While the AAP is contesting four Lok Sabha seats in Delhi, the Congress has fielded candidates on three.
The BJP had won all the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi in the 2014 and 2019 general elections.
Lovely further said he was unable to continue as the party unit chief as “all unanimous decisions taken by the senior Delhi Congress leaders have been unilaterally vetoed by the AICC General Secretary (Delhi in-charge)”.
A minister in the Sheila Dikshit government, Lovely was appointed as the Delhi Congress chief in August last year.
He alleged that AICC in-charge Babria forced him to suspend senior party leader Raj Kumar Chauhan.
He further lamented that no senior AICC leader has spoken to him about pacifying the party workers who are unhappy with the decision and protested outside the DPCC office when the selected candidates were being introduced to the media.
Lovely was first elected as an MLA in 1998 from Gandhi Nagar. He served as the minister of transport, education, urban development and revenue in the Congress government in Delhi.
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