Lovely quits as Delhi Congress chief, criticises AAP pact, poll picks

NEW DELHI: With less than a month to go for voting in the capital,

Delhi Congress chief

Arvinder Singh Lovely quit his post Sunday, citing the party’s

alliance with AAP

in the city, the high command’s choices of Lok Sabha candidates, and not getting freedom to elect party functionaries according to his preferences.
Claiming he wasn’t joining any other political party, Lovely said his

resignation

reflected the pain of Congress workers because the “ideals they had been fighting for during the last seven to eight years” were being compromised.

“We are fighting the elections together, but never did Congress workers say we were giving a clean chit to them (AAP) or giving them credit for building schools and hospitals, which is far from the reality,” Lovely said.
In his resignation letter sent to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Lovely said the state unit was against the alliance, but the high command still went ahead with it. He also expressed displeasure over the choice of Kanhaiya Kumar as Congress candidate from North East Delhi and Udit Raj from North West Delhi.

This is not the first time that Lovely has sprung a surprise. In 2017, he quit the party and joined BJP, but later returned to Congress in 2018.
Lovely said all unanimous decisions taken by senior Delhi Congress functionaries had been unilaterally vetoed by AICC general secretary Delhi in-charge (Deepak Babaria), and the state unit was not even intimated about the decisions, including the Lok Sabha candidate selections. Lovely, who was appointed state president last year, said even though the Delhi Congress unit was against the alliance with AAP, he publicly backed it and ensured that the entire unit "fell in line with the high command's final order". "The Delhi Congress unit was against an alliance with a party that was formed on the sole basis of levelling false, fabricated, and mala fide corruption charges against Congress... half of the cabinet ministers (of AAP) are currently in jail on corruption charges. Despite that, the party (Congress) made a decision to ally with AAP in Delhi. We respected the party's final decision... I even went to the extent of visiting CM (Arvind) Kejriwal's residence on the night of his arrest along with Subhash Chopra and Sandeep Dikshit, despite the same being against my position on the matter," he said.

As alliance partners in Delhi, AAP is fighting for four seats: East, New Delhi, South, and West, while Congress is contesting the remaining three—North East, North West, and Chandni Chowk.
"Since my appointment as DPCC president, the AICC general secretary Delhi in-charge has not allowed me to make any senior appointments in DPCC. My request for appointment of a veteran leader as media head of DPCC was blatantly rejected. Till date, he has not allowed DPCC to appoint all block presidents in the city. Resultantly, more than 150 blocks in Delhi do not have a block president," Lovely said.
He alleged that Babaria forced him to suspend senior party functionary Raj Kumar Chauhan. “Instead of calming the situation, he further, at public meetings, entered into numerous heated exchanges with Sandeep Dikshit, (ex-MP), Raj Kumar Chauhan (ex-Delhi minister), Bhisham Sharma (ex-MLA) and Surender Kumar (ex-MLA)," he wrote in his letter.
AAP functionaries were in a wait-and-watch mode and largely refrained from commenting on the developments. Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj, however, said, "Congress is our alliance partner, and this is the internal matter of the party; hence, I believe it's better that they (Congress) speak about it."
Lovely also criticised Congress’s North East Delhi candidate Kanhaiya Kumar for heaping praise on CM Kejriwal, who has been arrested in an alleged money laundering case related to Delhi excise policy.
"The candidate from North East Delhi has also been giving media bytes falsely praising Delhi CM, in direct contravention of the party line and the local party workers' beliefs. In direct contradiction to the true factual position and the misery of Delhi citizens, he endorsed the false propaganda of AAP regarding the supposed work done by them in education, health, road, and electricity sectors," he said.
"Such ill-thought and factually incorrect statements have not gone down well with the Delhi Congress unit since the local party workers had an inherent understanding that the alliance was not done in appreciation of AAP's false propaganda of the development of Delhi… but (as) a compromise to improve the chances of victory for Congress in the Lok Sabha polls.”
Lovely added: "It appears that the North East Delhi candidate is unaware of the fact that, admittedly, the condition of schools, hospitals and public infrastructure in Delhi, under AAP govt, has severely worsened compared with the development work done under the late Sheila Dikshit Ji's Congress regime," Lovely said.