Former Congress leader and spokesperson Deepika Pushkar Nath Monday said that she was threatened to lose her place in the party for raising the issue of Dogra Swabhiman Sangathan Party chief Lal Singh’s joining the Bharat Jodo Yatra with Rahul Gandhi in Jammu.
In her resignation letter to Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, Nath said that she tried to reach out to senior Congress leaders for Singh’s joining the Yatra, but they maintained “convenient silence on it for days”.
“This is continuation with my tweet dated 17th January, 2023 …wherein I have resigned from Indian National Congress (INC) in a compelling situation which was created around me by allowing Choudhary Lal Singh to be part of Bharat Jodo Yatra on ideological grounds,” Nath said in a letter.
“Before reaching this extreme end, when I got to know about his inclusion into Bharat Jodo Yatra (BYJ), on 12th January, 2023, I made my concerns of his joining BYJ known to a senior leader at AICC by way of making a detailed written communication to him and sent its copy to the concerned both at JKPCC and AICC for information. Instead of taking note of the same, the senior leader (mentioned above) in authority of taking decisions-maintained convenient silence on it for days,” she said.
Nath alleges that a senior Congress MP threatened her for raising the issue with senior party leaders.
“A senior female leader who is a Member Parliament tried to silence me by threatening that my having direct communication with the senior leader, can land me in deep trouble as I can be cornered me in the party and would not get my due share,” Nath alleges.
Singh became a center of controversy after he publicly supported the accused in the infamous Kathua rape-murder case of an eight-year-old girl from a tribal community in 2018.
“After writing to the senior leader, I mentioned above, I started having written and verbal communication with the other senior leaders (also close to high command) at AICC and expressed my concerns of Lal Singh’s joining Yatra which unfortunately no one took note of, rather one of the leaders who recently was seen advising media of not calling me a leader, said on record that Lal Singh will only join the Yatra but not the party, which the other leaders at JKPCC were shying away from confirming and the media had started covering it widely,” she said.
Nath said in a preparatory meeting of Bharat Jodo Yatra at Jammu, wherein the JKPCC Chief complained about not receiving funds for the Yatra from the party leaders at JKPCC, she mustered paying one lakh rupees from her pocket to make the event successful.
“ Had I been the enemy of the party, I would have not done the same, rather enjoyed it struggling for contribution,” she said, adding that she strongly believe that all those who were well informed by me about the recusations of Singh’s joining the Yatra, are the real enemies of Congress as they were in a position from where they could have easily prevented this disaster from happening.
