Referring to senior party colleague Jitin Prasada switching over the BJP on Wednesday, rebel Congress MLA from Sadar seat of Rae Bareli, Aditi Singh said it was high time the party mandarins did some introspection as to why senior and committed leaders were leaving the organisation one by one.
“One by one, all young and dynamic leaders are leaving the Congress. The party brass must seriously introspect the unending phenomenon. I am sure Jitin Prasada has made a decision after much thinking. He has been a Union Minister at a young age and he is a dynamic leader. Congress’s loss is BJP’s gain,” Singh told mediapersons in Lucknow on Thursday.
Earlier, the Congress had moved a petition to disqualify Aditi Singh from the UP Assembly for anti-party activities, but it was quashed by Assembly Speaker Hriday Narayan Dikshit.
Aditi had earlier extended her support to the BJP-led Central government’s decision to abrogate provisions of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that did away with the special status extended to Jammu and Kashmir.
The UP Congress had written to the Speaker seeking disqualification of the Rae Bareli legislator for defying the party whip and attending a special Assembly session organised by the Yogi government to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi in 2020. Singh also absented herself from a Congress training session in Rae Bareli last October and was served a show cause notice by the then CLP leader Ajay Kumar Singh Lallu.
Meanwhile, Congress leader Rashid Alvi too urged the senior Congress leaders to connect with cadres from the grassroots level. “Congress should introspect and seek accountability. They should talk to people at the grassroots. When someone is weak, people often leave them,” Alvi said.
In a major setback to the Congress ahead of the 2022 Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Jitin Prasada, who had been disillusioned with the party brass, switched over to the BJP in the presence of BJP chief JP Nadda after meeting Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal in New Delhi on Wednesday. Prasada, was also a part of the G-23 group in Congress that wrote to the party leadership registering its dissent.
