"Disheartening...," Congress leader Abhishek Dutt after Arvinder Singh Lovely's resignation

New Delhi [India], April 28 : After the resignation of Arvinder Singh Lovely as Delhi Congress President, party leader Abhishek Dutt on Sunday said that it is "disheartening" that the senior leader of the party is resigning 20 days before the Lok Sabha elections in the national capital.
"I read his letter and it is really disheartening to see that such a senior leader who was given everything from Congress, is resigning 20 days before the elections. This shows that he declined the system of the party. In his letter he wrote that he was against the alliance (INDIA) but then why was he asking for tickets?" Dutt told ANI.
Former Congress MLA Asif Mohammad Khan said that BJP is getting directly benefitted from this.
"If you just wanted to resign, you should have gone to Khargeji and resigned quietly. If you didn't have any malicious intent, you would've silently gone and resigned and the party would have tried to convince you. But the way you openly shared your (resignation) letter to the media, the BJP is getting directly benefitted," he said.
Congress Leader Deepak Babaria said that "Congress High Command has accepted his resignation with immediate effect."
Answering the question of whether this incident will bring a challenge towards Congress, he replied, "Challenges can come every moment from different sides. Some challenges are small and some are big. But that doesn't mean that our work will stop or our candidate will lose."
Meanwhile, BJP leader Shehzad Poonawalla has criticized the Congress party following the resignation of the Delhi Congress Committee President Arvinder Singh Lovely who has accused the Congress party of lacking mission and vision and "steeped in confusion, division, and contradictions."
"On the one hand, there is an alliance of mission and vision under the leadership of PM Modi that is constantly working for the country and on the other hand the alliance of INDI and Congress party especially has no mission vision, it is only steeped in confusion division and contradictions," said Poonawalla.
BJP leader RP Singh said that "ground-level leaders" are feeling "suffocated" in the party.
"Things are not going well in the Congress. Ground-level leaders of the party are fed up. It seems that till yesterday they (Congress) used to accuse people of corruption, today they are contesting elections by making a compromise with the same people. How is this possible? It is clearly visible that people are feeling suffocated there, that is why they are resigning," RP Singh said.
Delhi Congress president Arvinder Singh Lovely has resigned from his post, party officials on Sunday said.
"The 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. Despite that, the Party made a decision to ally with the AAP in Delhi...," Arvinder Singh Lovely wrote in his resignation letter.
Lovely was appointed to the post in August 2023.
In his letter to the Congress National President, Mallikarjun Kharge, Lovely said that all unanimous decisions taken by the Senior Delhi Congress leaders have been unilaterally vetoed by the AICC General Secretary (Delhi In-charge).
"Since my appointment as DPCC President, the AICC General Secretary (Delhi In-charge) has not allowed me to make any senior appointments in the DPCC. My request for the appointment of a veteran leader as Media head of DPCC was blatantly rejected. To date, the AICC General Secretary (Delhi In-charge) has not allowed the DPCC to appoint all Block presidents in the city. Resultantly more than 150 blocks in Delhi do not presently have a Block President," he said.
Further, he said that despite Aam Aadmi Party accusing the Congress of corruption, the party allied (INDIA bloc) with them.
"The 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 decided to ally with the AAP in Delhi," Lovely said in his letter to Kharge.
"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 former DPCC President also pointed out that pursuant to the alliance, the Delhi Congress was allotted three Parliamentary Seats to fight in the present General Elections.
He also highlighted the comments made by the North-East Delhi candidate (Kanhaiya Kumar), for falsely praising the Delhi CM and endorsing the works done by AAP in the Education, Health, Road and Electricity sector.
"Such ill-thought and factually incorrect statements have not gone down well with the Local Party 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 and was in fact, a "compromise- to improve the chances of victory for the Party as part of the National Alliance," he said.
Lovely, said that since he cannot protect the interests of the Party Workers, he sees no reason to continue in the said post.
Voting for all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi is scheduled to take place on May 25, during the sixth phase of the ongoing general elections. The counting for all seven phases is scheduled for June 4.