New Delhi:
Arvinder Singh Lovely, who has stepped down from the post of Delhi Congress chief, has strongly refuted speculation that he is about to switch camps and was acting at the behest of the BJP. Mr Lovely claimed he did not leak his own resignation letter to the media or resign from the party's primary membership. He said he resigned because he didn't feel up to the task of firing people.
“I was asked to remove leaders who had been loyal to Congress for generations. I couldn't do that… A party should reach out to dissatisfied people and not alienate them further,” he told NDTV in an exclusive interview.
On his biggest issue – the alliance between the Congress and old rival Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi – Mr Lovely indicated that the alliance was costing the Congress its own ground. Under the seven-seat-sharing deal in the national capital, AAP is contesting four seats and Congress three.
But “there are no posters of Congress leaders in any of the seven seats of Delhi. AAP is not using even a single poster of Congress in the Delhi seats where it is contesting,” he said, stating that after preparing the Congress state unit for entry into the alliance he is “now facing insults”.
For the Delhi Congress – which was swept from power by the anti-corruption drive led by Anna Hazare and AAP leaders even before the party was formed – an alliance with Arvind Kejriwal is anathema. The fierce backlash had scuttled the opposition's unity efforts in 2019. But with the Opposition's call to present a united front this time, the two parties have entered into a seat-sharing plan in Delhi.
However, the unity stops at the borders of Delhi. In Punjab and elsewhere, the two parties have fielded candidates against each other, upsetting the plan of one-on-one contests that many opposition leaders agreed was the only way to defeat the BJP.
Mr Lovely, who extended his support to Arvind Kejriwal after his arrest, today said he was only carrying out the orders of the party high command. “I have always followed the line of the high command – until now,” he told NDTV.
In his letter to Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, Mr Lovely had pointed out the jailing of several AAP ministers in connection with corruption cases. Despite this, the Congress formed an alliance with Arvind Kejriwal's party for the Lok Sabha elections. Unable to protect the interests of Congress workers in Delhi, he resigned, he added.