Team News Riveting
Mumbai, April 4
A day after quitting Congress party, Sanjay Nirupam on Thursday lashed out at the leadership and said there was five power centres in the organisation that had put the workers in a fix.
“All five– Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge and KC Venugopal– have their own lobbies and clash with each other,” he said. Party workers don’t understand what Venugopal says in Hindi and English, he said, adding with a mimic that most of the party leaders don’t understand Malayalam. “He (Venugopal) is power organisational General Secretary and the party is fast degrading its political position under his leadership,” Nirupam said.
Amidst the tussle between different power centres, it has been a challenging task for the Congress leaders and activists to work in the party, he added. “There is huge frustration amid party cadres. On the ideological front as well, Congress calls itself secular. Mahatma Gandhi believed in sarva dharma samabhav. All ideologies have a time limit. Nehruvian secularism which denies religion, has ended. The unfortunate thing is, that Congress isn’t willing to accept it,” he added.
Interestingly, Nirupam had sent his resignation to Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge before the party expelled him. Nirupam shared a screenshot of his resignation mail to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on X and wrote, “Looks like immediately after the party received my resignation letter last night, they decided to issue my expulsion. Good to see such promptness. Just sharing this information.”
The Congress on Wednesday expelled the Maharashtra leader from the party for six years for making anti-party statements amid seat-sharing talks with Shiv Sena (UBT) for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
The 59-year-old journalist-turned-politician began his address with ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and attacked Maha Vikas Agadhi (MVA) for making ‘Khichdi chor’ Amol Kirtikar candidate from Mumbai’s North-West seat. “MVA made a khichadi chor our candidate. BJP was called the Bhrasht Janata party. What is your standing to call BJP, when you give a Khichadi chor a ticket? I had expected that my party would take note. I wrote my resignation to Kharge Ji at 10.43 PM,” he said.
Calling Congress directionless, he said there is no organisational strength in the party.
