LUCKNOW: The 10 Congress leaders, who were expelled on Sunday for anti-party activities and indiscipline, petitioned AICC chief Sonia Gandhi seeking her immediate intervention. They claimed the action against them was ‘unconstitutional’.
Calling themselves the ‘real Congress,’ they threatened agitation against the ‘present Congress’ in Uttar Pradesh.
Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) disciplinary committee had expelled 10 leaders — MP Santosh Singh, former MLC Siraj Mehandi, former ministers Ramkrishna Dwivedi and Satyadev Tripathi, AICC member Rajendra Singh Solanki, former MLAs Bhudhar Narain Mishra, Vinod Chaudhary and Nek Chandra Pandey, former UP youth Congress president Swayam Prakash Goswami and former District Congress Committee president of Gorakhpur Sanjeev Singh — for “opposing decisions related to the UPCC that were taken by the All India Congress Committee (AICC).”
Nine of the 10 expelled leaders sought Sonia Gandhi’s intervention. “The expulsion was undemocratic against the tenets of the Congress’ constitution and uncalled for,” they said.
In an indirect reference to AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and her newly-constituted team, the dissenting leaders accused the present leadership of being unlike the Congress.
“This new leadership knows nothing about the party and is working against it,” they said. The UPCC disciplinary committee had on Thursday issued a show-cause notice to the senior leaders for ‘indulging in anti-party activities’.