NEW DELHI: NEW DELHI: In a major setback to the Congress ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee's President Arvinder Singh Lovely resigned from the post on Sunday.
In his 4-page long resignation letter to the AICC President Mallikarjun Kharge, Lovely attributed his decision to various reasons including Congress' decision to ally with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Lovely also mentioned the party's decision to field outsiders as candidates and the 'undemocratic' behaviour of the AICC Delhi in charge Deepak Babaria.
According to Lovely, several local leaders were against the alliance with AAP as the party was formed after levelling malafide corruption allegations against the Congress, which was the ruling party in Delhi as well as the Centre.
"The Delhi Congress unit opposed an alliance with a party that was formed solely based on levelling false, fabricated, and mala fide corruption charges against the Congress, and whose half-cabinet minister is currently in jail on corruption charges. Despite that, the party decided to ally with AAP in Delhi," he wrote in his resignation letter.
"We respected the Party's final decision. Not only did I publicly back the decision, I also ensured that the full State Unit fell in line with the High Command's final order. On instructions from AICC General Secretary (Organisation), I even went to the extent of visiting Kejriwal's residence on the night of his Arrest along with Subash Chopra and Sandeep Dikshit, despite the same being against my position on the matter," he added.
The DPCC chief expressed his displeasure in the seat-sharing formula under Congress-AAP alliance where the former received only three out of seven seats.
He said that even on those seats, veteran leaders were avoided for tickets and the party fielded candidates who are strangers to Delhi politics.
"...given the limited number of seats granted to the Congress party in the alliance in Delhi, in the interest of the party in Delhi and to ensure that the tickets are allotted to senior Congress colleagues, I publicly withdrew my name and opted out of being considered as a potential candidate. While rejecting the views of the DPCC, all observers, and local party workers, the North-West and Northeast Delhi seats were given to two candidates who were complete strangers to the Delhi Congress and party," he stated.
Lovely also revealed in his letter that Deepak Babaria, the AICC in-charge of Delhi, was undermining the decisions of senior leadership of the party's city unit.
"The AICC general secretary (Delhi in-charge) has unilaterally vetoed all unanimous decisions made by senior Delhi Congress leaders. Since my appointment as DPCC president, the AICC general secretary has prohibited me from making any senior appointments within the DPCC. My request to appoint a veteran leader as DPCC's media head was flatly denied. To date, the AICC general secretary has refused to allow the DPCC to appoint all block presidents in the city, leaving more than 150 blocks in Delhi without block presidents," Lovely wrote.
Lovely also slammed Congress’ Northeast Delhi Candidate Kanhaiya Kumar for publicly praising Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
Replacing Anil Chaudhary, Lovely was appointed as president of the Delhi unit of the Congress in August 2023 in an apparent move to revive the party’s fortunes in the national capital, where it has not been able to win even a single Assembly election or a seat in the Lok Sabha for a decade now.
Lovely had joined the BJP in 2017 but came back to the Congress fold just months after quitting the grand old party.