Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi said on Monday that AK Antony-led disciplinary action committee of the AICC would take a final call on fate of party leader and Chhattisgarh former Chief Minister Ajit Jogi who is accused of fixing an Assembly bypoll along with his son and others.
Gandhi was in Chhattisgarh on a day-long trip to visit the Giroudhpuri, the birth place of Satnami Samaj’s top religious leader Guru Ghasidas.
While returning back to Delhi, Gandhi told newspersons at Raipur airport in reply to a query, “the issue (action against Ajit Jogi) has been referred to AICC disciplinary action committee which is authorised to take a final decision’’.
Jogi family hit headlines in January this year when media houses broke out a report on basis of an alleged phone conversations between Ajit Jogi, his son Amit Jogi, Chief Minister Raman Singh’s son-in-law Puneet Gupta and several others to “fix” the Antagarh assembly bypoll in which Congress candidate Manturam Pawar, a die-hard Jogi supporter, pulled out from electoral fray at the eleventh hour which allowed the BJP candidate a walkover.
The Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee (CGPCC) took a strong note of the media reports and expelled Amit Jogi in January for a period of six years and recommended AICC to take similar kind of action against Ajit Jogi since he is a member of the party’s highest decision-making body, the Congress Working Committee (CWC).
Jogi, a popular face of Congress in Chhattisgarh, has track record of strained relationship with CGPCC chief Bhupesh Baghel and the latter is lobbying hard for weeks at the highest level in Congress to boot Jogi out of the party.
Meanwhile, a seasoned politician Jogi who is bound to a wheelchair since 2004 after he met a near fatal road accident, said that he had full faith in party’s high-command and he would definitely get justice.
Amit Jogi too had reacted to CGPCC expulsion decision that he had been denied justice and hoped that party high-command would revoke the CGPCC’s expulsion decision because he was Rs a victim of a bigger political conspiracy’.