Chandigarh: Soon after the Haryana assembly elections, senior Congress leader and former minister Capt Ajay Singh Yadav on Thursday quit the party alleging shabby treatment after Sonia Gandhi left the post of party president. He said he was quitting the party and also resigning as chairman of the All India Congress Committee's (AICC's) Other Backward Classes (OBC) department.
Yadav (65) said he is disillusioned with the party high command "for treating me shabbily after Sonia Gandhi left the post of Congress President". "I have sent my resignation letter to Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge ji from Chairman AICC OBC Department and also from primary membership of Indian National Congress party @kharge @RahulGandhi @SoniaGandhiiINC," Yadav posted on X.
"This decision of resigning was really hard decision with whom my family had 70 years of association as my father late Rao Abhey Singh became MLA in 1952 and there after I continued with family tradition but am disillusioned with the party high command for treating me shabbily after Sonia Gandhi left the post of Congress President @kharge @RahulGandhi @SoniaGandhiiINC," Yadav posted on X.
In the past couple of years, Yadav is the third prominent leader to quit the Congress, the other two being Kuldeep Bishnoi and Kiran Choudhry, both of whom are with the BJP. Yadav, who is considered as the bete noire of former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, had recently commented on the party state unit's alleged infighting ahead of the assembly polls.
Tussle in Haryana Congress for becoming the chief minister before getting the people's mandate was a big blunder, Yadav had recently said. Yadav, whose son Chiranjeev Rao recently lost from Rewari assembly seat in the polls, had said the party should introspect for its failure in southern Haryana especially Gurugram, Rewari, Mahendragarh and Faridabad where it won just one seat as against 10 by the BJP.
He had also said the Ahirwal region has no representation in the Congress Working Committee (CWC), Central Election Committee (CEC), as AICC general secretaries or even in Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee (HPCC). Yadav was also learnt to be unhappy with his party over choice of several candidates for the Haryana polls.
The Congress leader had also went on to allege that his position as the AICC OBC department chairman was also an eyewash and toothless. The BJP rode to power for the third consecutive term in Haryana in the recently held polls. Yadav, who was a minister in the previous Hooda government, never got along well with Bhupinder Hooda.
Meanwhile, the BJP had on Tuesday accused the Congress of being an anti-OBC and anti-Dalit party, and demanded that Rahul Gandhi must tell the country why Capt Ajay Singh Yadav, chairman of the party's OBC front, was "insulted" during the Haryana assembly polls. BJP national spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla had launched an offensive against the Congress citing Yadav's recent comment that the party should introspect for the losses it suffered, especially in southern Haryana, in the just concluded assembly elections in the state.
