The brewing internal rifts within the Congress party have come out in the public as angry Congress workers staged a massive protest against Kanhaiya Kumar, the party’s candidate from the North East Delhi seat. Highlighting that Kumar is an ‘outsider’ in this seat, the Congress workers held black posters with “need local candidate not outsider” written on them.
Notably, the development comes hours after state Congress Chief Arvinder Singh Lovely resigned from his post on Sunday morning citing interference in functioning and alliance with ‘liar’ Aam Aadmi Party. In his resignation letter, Lovely accused Kanhaiya Kumar of praising the AAP and its chief Arvind Kejriwal which was against the belief of party workers.
Lovely said, “The candidate from North East Delhi (Kanhaiya Kumar) has also been giving media bytes falsely praising the Delhi CM, in direct contravention of the party line and local party workers’ beliefs.”
It is pertinent to note that arch-rival Congress and AAP are jointly fighting the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi under the I.N.D.I. Alliance. Notably, the two parties are not in alliance in Punjab. As per the seat-sharing formula for Delhi, Congress is contesting on three seats while AAP is contesting on the remaining four seats. However, two Congress candidates have faced stiff protests since the announcement of their candidature.
In his letter, Arvinder Singh Lovely highlighted that the announcement of the candidature of Kanhaiya Kumar and Udit Raj who is contesting from the North West Delhi seat, was not taken well by Congress leaders and workers, who consider them as “outsiders”.
Following this development, several Congress workers from the Delhi unit stood outside Kumar’s newly inaugurated office holding black posters and shouting ‘outsider’ labels against him. As per reports, after the announcement, the Congress party has been divided into two factions with a substantive number of party workers demanding that the candidate for these seats be changed. The two factions reportedly had aggressive arguments and manhandled supporters of the other side.
As per ANI video footage, supporters of Arvind Singh Lovely heckled and manhandled former Congress MLA Asif Mohammad Khan when he argued that the former Congress state Chief should have tendered his resignation in private.
#WATCH | Delhi: Arvinder Singh Lovely's supporters heckled and manhandled former Congress MLA Asif Mohammad Khan.
— ANI (@ANI) April 28, 2024
Arvinder Singh Lovely has resigned as Delhi Congress President, earlier today. pic.twitter.com/KknlitmCqi
Amidst the infighting between supporters, senior Delhi Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit who is the son of late former Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit also argued that the party should carefully consider the points raised by Arvind Singh Lovely in his letter, alluding his support to the agitated party workers over the two controversial candidates.
#WATCH | Delhi: On the resignation of Delhi Congress President Arvinder Singh Lovely, Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit said, "… Being the Congress President and a Congress worker, he (Arvinder Singh Lovely) has a personal pain… His pain is that we are struggling to bring back… pic.twitter.com/zovec7o4n6
— ANI (@ANI) April 28, 2024
Earlier, it was reported that Arvinder Singh Lovely as DPCC president had convened a meeting to deliberate on the Congress’s future strategy. However, tensions flared up in the meeting after a war of words erupted between Kanhaiya Kumar and Sandeep Dikshit.
The verbal exchange reportedly erupted between the two leaders after Kumar allegedly responded to Dikshit’s allegations that his candidature hurt the party’s performance elsewhere in the national capital.
Meanwhile, Congress had announced Kanhaiya Kumar’s candidature from Northeast Delhi weeks after it finalised the seat-sharing formula in Bihar, the state from which Kumar originally hails.
The Former JNUSU President Kumar, who fought from a CPI(M) ticket in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, suffered an ignominious loss to BJP’s Giriraj Singh from the Begusarai Lok Sabha constituency. He later joined the Congress party and seemed to have forged a close bond with Rahul Gandhi, senior Congress leader and former party president.
He rose to the media limelight in the Seditious Remarks case in which several JNU Student union leaders were accused of raising anti-India slogans including chants of ‘Tukde-tukde’ (balkanisation) of India.
“Naxalites who are ki11ed by army should be called real martyrs.”
— Shakuni Mama (@shakunimama420) April 20, 2024
– Congress leader & Anand Ji’s very own Comrade Kanhaiya Kumar to Comrade Ravish Kumar 🥹 pic.twitter.com/vdLNPjrJOT
Several videos of the controversial Former left-wing Student leader are also doing rounds on the internet in which he could be heard making objectionable remarks about the Indian army alleging that in Kashmir, women are raped by security personnel.
