As UP Congress unit targets Jitin Prasada over letter, Kapil Sibal calls it 'unfortunate'

At a meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) last week., internal divisions in the party had come out in the open after 23 top leaders called for a shake-up in top leadership. The party, including Rahul Gandhi, had then strongly criticised the leaders who wrote the letter, saying the right forum to take up the issues was the CWC meeting and not the media. Rahul also questioned the timing of the letter, saying it came at a time when Sonia was unwell and was in hospital and the party was making efforts to defuse the political crisis in Rajasthan.

The signatories in the letter included Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, Kapil Sibal, Mukul Wasnik, Jitin Prasada, Manish Tewari, Shashi Tharoor and ex-Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

Now, Prasada, an Uttar Pradesh leader and a Brahmin organiser, is under fire after a UP Congress unit called for disciplinary action against him after the letter. 

"Jitin Prasada is the only person from Uttar Pradesh to have signed the letter. His family history has been against the Gandhi family and his father the late Jitendra Prasad proved it by fighting elections against Sonia Gandhi. Despite this, Sonia Gandhi gave Jitin Prasada a Lok Sabha ticket and made him a minister. What he has done is gross indiscipline and the district congress committee wants strict action against him and condemns his actions " the resolution, quoted by NDTV, reads.

Kapil Sibal, another signatory to the letter, responded on Twitter. "Unfortunate that Jitin Prasada is being officially targeted in UP Congress needs to target the BJP with surgical strikes instead wasting its energy by targeting its own," he wrote.

Quoting Sibal's tweet, Tewari tweeted: "Prescient".

The 'group of 23' also includes former chief ministers Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Rajender Kaur Bhattal and Prithviraj Chavan; former PCC chiefs Raj Babbar (UP), Arvinder Singh Lovely (Delhi) and Kaul Singh Thakur (Himachal); current Bihar campaign chief Akhilesh Singh, former Haryana Speaker Kuldeep Sharma; former Delhi Speaker Yoganand Shastri and former MP Sandeep Dixit.