Chandigarh: Senior Congress leaders in Punjab have assailed their former colleague Sunil Jakhar, who is now in the BJP, for his barb against former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi and current Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, in the backdrop of party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad’s resignation from the party.
Interacting with the media, former Punjab Congress president Jakhar, who had himself left the in May to join BJP, had on Friday said what Azad’s resignation signified was that Congress had it coming.
``They perpetuated this situation. It was writing on the wall which they chose to ignore - whether it was Jyotiraditya Scindia, R P N Singh, Jitin Prasada and now Azad sa'ab’’, he was quoted as saying in the media reports.
When asked about the Congress party in Punjab, Jakhar went on to say that even in the state body nobody in Congress had accepted Charanjit Singh Channi as the chief minister when he was appointed and now nobody accepted Raja Warring as the state Congress president.
However, defending state party leadership, the Congress leaders on the other hand, tore into Jakhar, maintaining that Jakhar who had betrayed the Congress, should not have commented on the Congress, as he had no moral right to comment on the working of other parties.
The senior Congress leaders who signed this statement included Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, Brahm Mohindra, Tripat Rajinder Singh Bajwa, Rana Gurjeet Singh, Sukh Sarkaria, Aruna Chaudhary, Raj Kumar Chabbewal, Pargat Singh, Capt Sandeep Sandhu and Angad Singh Saini among others.
They held that each leader and worker accepted and respected Channi as the CM and that he (Jakhar) was the only exception who did not accept him as the CM as he was sulking since his ambition of becoming the CM, despite having lost assembly and parliamentary elections, was not fulfilled. They asked Jakhar to focus on his new party rather than poking his nose into the working of the Congress.
It is pertinent to mention here that one of the main reasons for Congress to face a drubbing in the state assembly elections in February this year, was the bitter bickering and bad blood in the party which led to the unceremonious exit of the then chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh and also rebellion by more than a dozen senior party leaders. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) thus won 92 seats out of the total 117 while the Congress finished with just 18 seats. While Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) won three seats and its ally BSP, one, the BJP won two seats and there is one independent MLA who could make it to the state assembly.
