The controversy over party leaders' letter to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi is still raging even after the grand old party called it a wrap at the Congress Working Committee early this week. A Congress unit in Uttar Pradesh has now demanded action against all the letter writers, with special mention of former Union Minister Jitin Prasada who also was a signatory to the letter that created a flutter.
After the many signatories like Anand Sharma, Verrappa Moily and Vivek Tankha cleared the air over the importance of pitching such a letter to the party chief seeking organisational revamp, senior party leader Kapil Sibal, another signatory to the letter, came to the defence of Jitin Prasada on Thursday saying the party should now focus to conduct surgical strikes on BJP rather than attacking its own leaders.
“Unfortunate that Jitin Prasada is being officially targeted in UP. Congress needs to target the BJP with surgical strikes instead of wasting its energy by targeting its own,” Sibal said on Twitter. Another party colleague, Manish Tewari responded to Sibal's post with a single word: “Prescient!”
The three -Sibal, Tewari and Prasad- are among the 23 Congress leaders who wrote to interim party president Sonia Gandhi calling for sweeping reforms, collective decision-making and “full-time, visible leadership”, causing fresh convulsions in the party as it struggles to retain its political relevance.
In this latest, a resolution addressed to Sonia Gandhi, the Congress unit of Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur Kheri district near Lucknow has called for action against all 23 signatories including Jitin Prasada. Jitin Prasad is the party's Brahmin face in UP and had represented the Dhaurahra Lok Sabha seat in 2009 and was a Minister in Manmohan Singh Goverment.
“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 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 read.
Congress said the UP letter does not have the sanction of either Sonia Gandhi or Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who is the central leader in charge of the state. The party's UP chief Ajay Kumar Lallu, however, said: “These are the feelings of party workers, how can one stop such feelings.”
In March 2019, just before the Lok Sabha elections, Prasada had rubbished rumours that he was quitting the Congress and was headed to the BJP.
Jitin Prasada's father Jitendra Prasada, a veteran Congress leader, had challenged the leadership of Rahul Gandhi's mother Sonia Gandhi in 1999 and had also contested against her for the post of party chief. Jitendra Prasada lost the bid. He died in 2002.