Kapil Sibal says Prasada being targeted in UP over letter
Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, August 27
The turmoil caused by a letter bomb in the Congress seems far from over, with former Union minister Kapil Sibal on Thursday taking to Twitter to allege official victimisation of younger colleague Jitin Prasada, one of the 20 signatories to a recent missive that sought sweeping changes to the party structures, including its presidency.
The letter was shot down on Monday at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee, which unanimously asked interim Congress chief Sonia Gandhi to continue till the new president is elected at the next AICC session and warned leaders against going public with grievances.
Though the letter writers, which include Sibal and Jitin, hailed Sonia’s “graciousness in letting bygones be bygones”, it appears the Congress rank and file is not prepared to forget that dissenters sought full-time chief virtually questioning Sonia.
“Unfortunate that Jitin Prasada is being officially targeted in UP. The Congress needs to target the BJP with surgical strikes instead of wasting its energy on targeting its own,” Sibal said today after the Lakhimpur Kheri district unit of the Uttar Pradesh Congress passed a resolution seeking action against the leaders who dissented.
The letter mentioned Jitin’s history of “betrayal of Gandhis” and how his father Jitendra Prasada contested the Congress president’s election against Sonia in 1999 and lost.
Jitin, the Brahmin face of the Congress in UP, is also a special CWC invitee and was at the receiving end at the committee meeting on Monday, which saw leaders attack letter writers who are also CWC members (Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mukul Wasnik and Anand Sharma).
Former minister and Anandpur Sahib MP Manish Tewari cryptically tagged Sibal’s post to say “prescient” as if foretelling the future of the ginger group that spoke publicly for inner party reform.
UP Congress chief Ajay Lallu, meanwhile, said the resolution by a district unit was not official but was certainly an expression of “sentiments of the people”.
