Amid indications of a rift within its ranks over senior leaders like P Chidambaram, Kamal Nath and Sushil Kumar Shinde being not invited to the 125th birth anniversary celebrations of Jawaharlal Nehru in the Capital early this week, the Congress on Friday claimed invites were dispatched to them.
AICC spokesperson Shaktisinh Gohil defended the party and said that invites were sent to all the senior party leaders, former Union Ministers, AICC and top PCC office bearers amongst others with secular vision and thoughts.“I can assure you that officially invites were sent to all the people being named. It may be a different reason that leaders usually have 3-4 addresses viz their permanent, local, constituencies and office. There is no reason of them not being invited for the party’s mega event,” Govil said at AICC briefing.
Defending the leaders’ absence at the conference, senior party functionaries said while Antony was unwell, Ramesh was not in the country. Several senior party leaders have expressed their dismay over being ignored from the event and not being invited for the event. Amongst others include AK Antony, Jairam Ramesh, Kapil Sibal who too were not present.
The leaders are believed to be upset with the party high command as well as Anand Sharma, who was the main figure handling the event and now is Deputy leader of Opposition Rajya Sabha.Sources in the party said that several top leaders are not happy with the functioning and elevation of Sharma as DyloP and that may be a reason that top leaders could not have been invited by the former Commerce Minister.
In a lighter vein, Govil also said that leaders receives a lot of wedding invitations and only they have to decide to attend a few of them due to time constraints as it is not humanly possible to be present at several places.