A tweet by a rebel AAP MLA on Sunday threatened to overshadow the Congress Punjab unit hours before Rahul Gandhi announced the party's chief ministerial face.
Kanwar Sandhu, a former journalist, was elected from Kharar on an AAP ticket in 2017, but quit the party last year. Sandhu tweeted on Sunday morning he had heard Sunil Jakhar, the former president of the Punjab Congress, was “calling it quits” from active politics due to “unwarranted, irresponsible comments” of his colleagues in the Congress.
Sandhu added he saw Jakhar as a gentleman and friend for long. He wrote, “Hope he will revisit his decision to quit active politics, and regale us with his witty one liners and we will also continue to get benefit of his poetic wisdom.”
However, Jakhar dismissed the claims. He told The Tribune he “was still part” of the Congress, saying the party had given him “So much”.
"Anybody doubting my commitment to the party is casting aspersions on me, he said, adding that he wasn’t actively campaigning for assembly elections because he wasn’t contesting,” The Tribune reported.
Jakhar had been critical of the factionalism in the Congress over the past several months. Last week, he claimed the majority of MLAs of the Congress had wanted him to take over as chief minister after Amarinder Singh quit last year, while current chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi had the least backing. Both the BJP and AAP used Jakhar's claims to target the Congress.
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While AAP leader Raghav Chadha accused the Congress of doing politics on the basis of caste and religion, Union minister and the BJP's in-charge for Punjab Gajendra Singh Shekhawat questioned the “selective secularism” of the grand old party by “refusing” to make Jakhar the chief minister “because of his religion”. Jakhar is a Hindu.