LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) chief Ajay Kumar Lallu, who was arrested in Agra on Wednesday evening in connection with protest by party leaders over the issue of movement of buses arranged by Congress for migrant workers, has been sent to 14-day judicial custody on late Wednesday night. He has been lodged in a temporary jail.
On Wednesday, Lallu was granted bail by an Agra court in a case lodged against him for flouting the norms of lockdown and staging protests along with his party men while squatting on the road. But before being released on bail, he was rearrested by a team of Lucknow police in a second case related to alleged
forgery and cheating filed in connection with the Congress' standoff with the UP government over the arrangement of buses for migrant workers.
On Tuesday night, an FIR against Lallu and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s private secretary Sandeep Singh was lodged at Hazratganj police station of Lucknow for cheating and forging documents. This happened after Lucknow’s Regional Transport Officer R P Dwivedi verified the bus numbers and found many vehicles mentioned in the list are auto-rickshaws or good carriers, truck and ambulance, etc.
Hundreds of buses parked at the Rajasthan-Uttar Pradesh border by the Congress party for migrant workers were turned back on Wednesday evening.
Meanwhile, the Congress party suspended its Rae Bareli MLA Aditi Singh from the party for allegedly indulging in "anti-party" activities on Thursday. Prior to it, she was removed from the position of general secretary of Congress' women wing on the charges of indulging in "indiscipline". Sources claimed that the
rebel MLA had quit all the WhatsApp groups of the party.
Aditi Singh’s suspension from the party was necessitated by her diatribe against her own party leadership on Wednesday over the controversy triggered over the Congress party’s offer of 1000 buses to ferry migrants to their native places in UP.
Targeting her party leadership, Aditi Singh, once considered to be a very close associate of Gandhi family, tweeted: "At the time of crisis, what was the need of the low-level politics. Gave the list of 1,000 buses, half of them fake or junked. Why this cruel joke? If you had buses why you didn't send them to
Rajasthan, MP, and Maharashtra.”
"When thousands of children were stuck in Kota, the Rajasthan government couldn't drop them to the borders, forget about home. Then Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath facilitated the children to reach home."
Notably, the party had already moved an application against Aditi Singh seeking her disqualification form Assembly for flouting the party whip and attending the special 48-hour session of UP assembly convened by the government to mark Gandhi Jayanti last year. The Congress’ application against Singh is already pending with the Speaker.