The high command has started reaching out to its Delhi leaders to control the damage.
This is the second time that Lovely has stepped down from the post of Delhi Congress chief.
In his resignation letter to Kharge, Lovely said that Congress workers were against the alliance with the AAP.
Targeting Kanhaiya Kumar, Lovely said that his statements praising Kejriwal have not gone well with the Delhi party unit.
A senior Delhi Congress leader, however, said there could be more to it.
BARELY WEEKS before voting for the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi, the Congress Sunday plunged into a crisis with senior leader Arvinder Singh Lovely resigning as the Delhi Congress president in protest against the party’s alliance with INDIA bloc partner AAP and over selection of party candidates, bringing to the fore the factional feud that has been raging for some time.
The Congress high command appeared to be in no mood to placate Lovely as AICC in-charge Deepak Babaria, who was the target of Lovely’s attack in his strongly-worded resignation letter to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, announced that the resignation has been accepted.
Although Lovely made it clear that he has only quit the party post and not the party, a section of the Congress leadership as well as AAP leaders believed that he would be joining the BJP again.
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Lovely’s resignation is a setback to the party in terms of optics and perception. Coming four days after former Delhi minister Rajkumar Chauhan quit the party, the resignation of Lovely, who has been heading the Delhi unit since August last year, is a blow to the Congress’s efforts for the May 25 elections in Delhi.
Arvinder Singh Lovely in New Delhi, Sunday. (Express photo by Amit Mehra) Arvinder Singh Lovely in New Delhi, Sunday. (Express photo by Amit Mehra)
What is more worrying for the Congress is that party insiders said that more leaders may follow suit. The high command has started reaching out to its Delhi leaders to control the damage.
Sources said the leadership may appoint an interim Delhi unit president, possibly Narendra Nath, a former MLA and current in-charge of the Delhi Congress’s disciplinary committee who is considered close to the leadership.
The high command is also said to be unhappy with Babaria’s handling of the affairs of the Delhi Congress but it is left with little option as far as Lovely is concerned. “The mood is to accept it as a fait accompli and move on,” a senior AICC functionary said. “Lovely wanted to contest from North-East Delhi but the high command imposed Kanhaiya Kumar… he had been sulking for some days,” another leader said.
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Explained The big question THE development comes at a time when both Congress and AAP candidates are beginning their campaign efforts in Delhi. The big question now: will the Congress be able to ensure transfer of its votes to the AAP in four seats, and will the party rank and file unitedly fight for its three candidates.
This is the second time that Lovely has stepped down from the post of Delhi Congress chief. In 2015, he resigned from the post after the AAP swept the Assembly polls. In 2017, he quit the Congress and joined the BJP, only to return a year later.
Following Chauhan’s resignation, The Indian Express had reported that all was not well in the Congress’s state unit and that old hands, who had “directly borne the brunt” of the AAP’s rise to power in the city “at its expense”, were understood to be planning their exit.
Like Chauhan, Lovely too cited issues related to the functioning of Babaria, the AICC in-charge of Delhi and Haryana, and made allegations against his conduct.
In his resignation letter to Kharge, Lovely said that Congress workers were against the alliance with the AAP. “Delhi Congress unit was against an alliance with a party which was formed on the sole basis of levelling false, fabricated and malafide corruption charges against the Congress party and in turn, whose half of the cabinet ministers are presently in jail on corruption charges. Despite that, the party made a decision to ally with the AAP in Delhi,” he stated.
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Lovely, who was initially considered a frontrunner for the party ticket from North East Delhi, also said that since the Congress got only three of the seven seats in Delhi as part of the alliance with AAP, he had withdrawn his name to accommodate “other senior leaders of Delhi Congress”. But the tickets were given to two leaders who were “total strangers” to Delhi, he said, referring to North West Delhi candidate Udit Raj and North East Delhi candidate Kanhaiya Kumar.
Lovely said he was also left on his own when it came to quelling dissent following the announcement of the party’s candidates.
Targeting Kanhaiya Kumar, Lovely said that his statements praising Kejriwal have not gone well with the Delhi party unit. “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 and was in fact, a ‘compromise to improve the chances of victory for the party as part of the national alliance’,” he stated.
Babaria, meanwhile, said the Congress high command has accepted Lovely’s resignation. “Some challenges will come our way due to his resignation but challenges are inevitable and it’s not a challenge big enough to stop our work, it’s all about filling up some gaps,” he said.
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“I accept his allegation that I stopped him sometimes… it was because I felt that people who should not get promoted are being promoted, which would have demoralised the other party workers,” Babaria said.
Responding to allegations of fielding “outsider candidates”, he said, “There is nothing like outsider candidates. The high command decides the candidates based on who is overall the best candidate for the state. It is the duty of all Congress workers to support those candidates.”
Speaking to reporters later, Lovely said, “I have submitted my resignation from the post of president of the Delhi Congress, and those who are alleging that I am going to join the BJP to receive Lok Sabha candidature, you all know that I had myself introduced the party’s candidates a few days ago… My struggle is for the values of the party that we have been fighting for since the last 8-9 years. We are fighting the elections together but the leadership never said that we will start giving a clean chit to the AAP.”
“It is not just my plight, it is the Congress workers’ plight. I wrote my grievances in the letter (to Kharge)… At the moment I am not going anywhere, not joining any party. I will, however, discuss the matter with the party members to decide my next step.”
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Haroon Yusuf, Naseeb Singh, Sandeep Dikshit and Chauhan were among the leaders who visited Lovely’s residence. On the possible way forward, a source close to Lovely said, “Around 30 former MLAs and many supporters came to express solidarity with him today with several suggesting that he form his own party. But that is just one of the suggestions. Since he is still a primary member of the party, he is understood to have decided to maintain the status quo for now.”
Sources close to Lovely said his decision to quit the post was “an emotional one”, triggered over “issues related to his self-respect”. A source said there had been several instances when party supporters and workers confronted him and questioned the alliance with AAP. The latest such incident was at a temple on Hanuman Jayanti when local Congress supporters questioned his decision to go ahead with an alliance.
A senior Delhi Congress leader, however, said there could be more to it. “He had not been coming to the party’s Delhi headquarters for many days… this cannot be a reaction to the alliance (with the AAP); the sole reason why he was put in charge of the Delhi unit was to ensure that the alliance went through smoothly.”
“He is either under pressure from the BJP, which he had joined for some time in 2017, or unhappy because he was not considered for a Lok Sabha ticket.”
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Following the announcement of the resignation, AAP minister Saurabh Bharadwaj took to X to allude to alleged links between Lovely and the BJP: “Is BJP changing its candidate for East Delhi?” However, speaking to reporters later, he said it was an internal matter of the Congress.
Another senior AAP leader said, “Even when the contours of our alliance in Delhi were being finalised, it was clear to us that Lovely ji would contest from North East Delhi. We believe it is because he did not get a seat that he has resigned from the post.”
On whether this comes as a surprise or impacts the AAP, the leader said: “There was talk of this for the past couple of days, especially after Chauhan’s resignation, but we were not sure. As for our campaign, it doesn’t really impact us because our campaign is centred on Arvind Kejriwal.”
