New Delhi, Apr 29 (PTI) Former Delhi MLAs Devender Yadav and Rajesh Lilothia are the likely front runners for the post of Congress' city unit chief after Arvinder Singh Lovely resigned from the post citing the alliance with the AAP as one of the reasons, the DPCC sources said on Monday.
Though the sources said either Yadav or Lilothia is Lovely's successor, others feel Abhishek Dutt can also be considered for the post.
Lovely submitted his resignation from the DPCC president's post on Saturday to party chief Mallikarjun Kharge. He said the Delhi Congress unit was against the alliance but the party high command went ahead with it.
In his resignation letter, Lovely also said he found himself "handicapped" as all unanimous decisions taken by senior Delhi unit leaders have been "unilaterally vetoed" by AICC Delhi in-charge Deepak Babaria.
Former DPCC chief Anil Chaudhary on Monday urged Kharge to expel Lovely from the party.
Taking to X, he wrote in Hindi saying what Lovely has done is very unfortunate. The way Congress candidate Nilesh Khumani in Surat gave a walkover to the BJP by colluding with them, Lovely has done the same in connivance with the BJP, he alleged.
"I request my leader respected @kharge ji and organisation general secretary @kcvenugopalmp ji to expel @ArvinderLovely from the party with immediate effect. Organisation is supreme," he wrote on X.
AAP leader Sanjay Singh lauded Lovely on Monday for the party's Lok Sabha poll alliance with the Congress. Singh told a press conference here that the credit for his party's Lok Sabha poll alliance with the Congress in the national capital goes to Lovely as well.
"I say this with responsibility that Lovely played a crucial role in our alliance with the Congress. I am not aware of the reasons for his contrary views now," the Rajya Sabha MP said when asked for his comment on the Congress leader's resignation from the party post.
Reacting to his remarks, Lovely told PTI, "Sanjay Singh is a nice man. But I think he is still in trauma. He has not been able to get normal after coming out of jail.
"When the INDIA bloc was formed in April, I was not the president (of the Delhi Congress). I was not even the president when the second meeting of the bloc took place in Bengaluru," he said.
Lovely said during the third meeting in Mumbai also, he was not the president. When he became the president, Singh was unfortunately sent to jail, he said.
"How did he (Sanjay) get to know that I was the architect (of the alliance)? It means there was someone in the jail who used to bring him out," he said.