Anand Sharma quits as Cong foreign dept chief

Senior leader and member of the Congress Working Committee Anand Sharma on Sunday resigned as chairman of the All-India Congress Committee foreign department.

Sharma, who was recently hand picked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi alongside three other Congress leaders to be part of the multi-party global outreach on Operation Sindoor, sent his resignation to party president Mallikarjun Kharge today.

In the letter, Sharma, a former union minister, said he wanted younger blood to come in. He also recalled the history of the Department of Foreign Affairs and said it had over the last few decades been actively engaged in building and strengthening the Indian National Congress' relations with like-minded political parties which share the values of democracy, equality and human rights.

"DFA mandate also included both taking international initiatives for freedom and human dignity, convening and participating in International conferences on issues of contemporary relevance. These have contributed in strengthening Congress party's profile and presence globally," Sharma said.

He said the Congress had built strong relations with major political parties in Asia, Africa, Middle East, Europe and Latin America.

"DFA has established an institutional mechanism for exchange of leadership delegations with fraternal political parties and International organisations," he said. Sharma has been proactively associated with all major international initiatives of the Congress since mid-1980s as Indian Youth Congress president.

These included NAM youth conference 1985 and the historic "Anti-Apartheid Conference" in 1987. These were universally acclaimed.

"INC successfully convened the historic Satyagraha Centenary conference in January 2007 and the international conference on the 125th anniversary of Pt Jawaharlal Nehru in November 2014. Attended by eminent world leaders, these conferences chaired by Congress president Sonia Gandhi received worldwide acclaim," he said, adding that the National Committee of DFA was last constituted in 2018.

"As I have conveyed earlier both to the Congress president and and Chairperson Congress parliamentary party, in my considered view, the committee needs to be reconstituted to bring in younger leaders of potential and promise. That will ensure continuity in its functioning," Sharma said in his resignation letter.