New Delhi:

Former Delhi Congress chief Arvinder Singh Lovely has returned to the BJP, days after he stepped down from the post. He had said he won’t join the BJP. But his move had already set off speculation about a crossover to the BJP.

Mr Lovely had denied he quit the Congress post upset over ticket distribution.

In a letter to Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, Mr Lovely had pointed to the jailing of many Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ministers in connection with corruption cases.

“Still, the Congress formed an alliance with Arvind Kejriwal’s party for the Lok Sabha elections,” he had said.

Mr Lovely quit as the party’s Delhi chief in 2015 too. He joined BJP in 2017, but returned to the Congress nine months later.

Mr Lovely joined the BJP in the presence of Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, BJP general secretary Vinod Tawde and Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva.

Along with Mr Lovely, former Congress MLAs Raj Kumar Chauhan, Naseeb Singh, and Neeraj Basoya, and former Youth Congress president Amit Mallik also joined the BJP.

New Delhi:

Arvinder Singh Lovely, who stepped down from the post of the Delhi Congress chief, has strongly refuted speculation that he is about to change camp and has been acting at the behest of the BJP. Asserting that he has not leaked his own resignation letter to the media or resigned from the primary membership of the party, Mr Lovely said he stepped down because he felt unequal to the task of sacking people.

“I was being asked to remove leaders loyal to the Congress for generations. I couldn’t do that…  A party should reach out to disgruntled people, not alienate them further,” he told NDTV in an exclusive interview.

About his bigger grouse — the Congress tie-up with longtime rival Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi — Mr Lovely indicated that the alliance was costing the Congress its own turf. Under the deal to share the seven seats in the national capital, AAP is contesting four seats and the Congress three.

But “in none of the seven seats of Delhi, Congress leaders’ posters are up. AAP is not even using a single poster of Congress in the seats of Delhi it is contesting from,” he said, declaring that after readying the Congress state unit for the alliance, he is “facing insults now”.

For Delhi Congress — swept out of power by the anti-corruption campaign led by Anna Hazare and AAP leaders even before the party was formed — a tie-up with Arvind Kejriwal is anathema. Their stiff resistance had scuttled the Opposition’s unity efforts in 2019. But with the Opposition call to present a united front this time, the two parties have come on board with a seat-sharing plan.

The unity, though, stops at the borders of Delhi. In Punjab and elsewhere, the two parties have fielded candidates against each other, throwing to the winds the plan of one-on-one contests that many Opposition leaders agreed was the only way to defeat the BJP.

Mr Lovely, who went to show support for Arvind Kejriwal after his arrest, said today that he was only carrying out the party high command’s orders. “I always toed the high command’s line – till now,” he told NDTV.

In his letter to Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, Mr Lovely had pointed to the jailing of several AAP ministers in connection to corruption cases. Despite that, the Congress formed an alliance with Arvind Kejriwal’s party for the Lok Sabha elections. Unable to protect the interests of the Delhi Congress workers, he was resigning from the post, he had added.

New Delhi:

Congress leader Arvinder Singh Lovely today resigned as the chief of the party’s Delhi unit over its alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

Arvinder Singh Lovely said that several AAP ministers have been jailed over corruption charges, still the Congress formed an alliance with Arvind Kejriwal’s party for the Lok Sabha elections amid opposition by party workers.

Mr Lovely – in a letter to Congress Chief Mallikarjun Kharge – said that since he cannot protect the interests of the Delhi Congress workers, he sees no reason to continue as the chief of city’s party unit.

“The Delhi Congress Unit was against an alliance with a party (AAP) which was formed on the sole basis of leveling false, fabricated and malafide corruption charges against the Congress. Despite that, the party made a decision to ally with the AAP in Delhi,” he said.

He said the party gave Lok Sabha tickets to candidates who were “total strangers” to the Delhi Congress unit, referring to Udit Raj’s candidature in North-west Delhi and Kanhaiya Kumar in Northeast Delhi. 

The party high command’s decision to field Kanhaiya Kumar and Udit Raj for the polls has caused friction among the party leaders in Delhi, sources said.

Party leaders, sources said, are not ready to compromise since the AICC and high command ignored their views and concerns. “Several Delhi leaders are also planning to join the BJP or form a new party if their issues are not resolved, sources told NDTV. 

Mr Lovely also slammed Kanhaiya Kumar for praising Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal who is behind bars.

“Such ill-thought and factually incorrect statements have not gone down well with the Delhi Congress unit since the local party workers had an inherent understanding that the alliance was not done in appreciation of AAP’s false propaganda of the development of Delhi,” he said.

Hinting at internal rift, Mr Lovely also alleged that several decisions taken by him as the Delhi Congress Chief were vetoed by AICC Delhi in-charge Deepak Babria.

“Since my appointment as DPCC President, the AICC General Secretary (Delhi In-charge) has not allowed me to make any senior appointments in the DPCC,” he said.

Arvinder Singh Lovely was appointed the Delhi Congress President in August last year.

The Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress had agreed to a 4:3 seat-sharing formula for Delhi earlier this year to put up a joint fight in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

In Delhi, the Arvind Kejriwal-led party is contesting four out of the seven seats – West Delhi, South Delhi, East Delhi, and New Delhi. The remaining three – North East Delhi, North West Delhi, and Chandni Chowk – are with the grand old party.

Seat-sharing has been one of the major headaches for the INDIA bloc with the aspirations of the regional parties dragging the negotiations. The Congress’s recent electoral setbacks in three heartland states have emboldened the regional powers to seek a bigger share of seats.

The INDIA bloc, which was set up last year to take on the BJP, has already lost two key members – Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal-United and Jayant Chaudhary’s Rashtra Lok Dal. Both have aligned with the BJP.