NEW DELHI: The Congress on Thursday appointed senior leader and former minister Arvinder Singh Lovely as its Delhi unit chief, replacing Anil Chaudhary. The move aims at reorganising the party ahead of the 2024 poll, according to sources.
The appointment of Lovely, who was DPCC chief between 2013 and 2015, comes at a time when the Congress and the AAP have joined the INDIA bloc.
Lovely, a four-time MLA from the Gandhi Nagar constituency, was the urban development and education minister between 2003 and 2013 in the Sheila Dikshit government. He joined BJP in 2017, but
returned to the Congress within months.
“The Congress president has appointed Arvinder Singh Lovely as president of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee with immediate effect,” a press statement by AICC general secretary KC Venugopal stated on Thursday. Lovely said that his immediate priority would be to put in place a structure so that the party can reach out to people.
“My role now is to strengthen the party organisation in Delhi. People have started looking up to Rahul Gandhi,” Lovely said. “We will take each and every leader, including the previous presidents, along and work unitedly to revive the party. We will focus on what’s missing and also reach out to the people of Delhi,” he said. “Like Rahul Gandhi raising inflation during his Bharat Jodo Yatra, we will also take up issues concerning Delhi,” he added.
Lovely was the youngest MLA when he was first elected to the Delhi Assembly in 1998 from the Gandhi Nagar seat. He went on to represent the constituency until 2015. He held several important portfolios in the successive Sheila Dikshit-led governments in Delhi.