UP Congress expels 10 party leaders for tarnishing party's image; big casualties

The Congress party's Uttar Pradesh unit on Sunday expelled ten of its senior leaders, including two former state ministers, for a period of six years for allegedly tarnishing the party's image and opposing its leadership's decisions at public forums. The leaders were expelled from the primary membership of the Congress, a member of the party's disciplinary committee Imran Masood said in a statement. Former UP ministers Ramkrishna Dwivedi and Satyadev Tripathi, Siraj Mehdi (former MLC), Santosh Singh (former MP), Bhoodhar Narayan Mishra (former MLA), Vinod Chaudhary (former MLA), Nek Chandra Pandey (former MLA), Swayam Prakash Goswami (former chairman of the Youth Congress) and senior leader Sanjeev Singh were expelled.

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These leaders are accused of opposing the decisions of the party leadership at public forums and tarnishing the image of the party, according to the statement. "A notice was issued to 11 leaders on Thursday and a reply was sought in the next 24 hours. Barring former MLA Hafiz Mohammad Umar, no one submitted their reply," Masood said. The Congress on Thursday served the notices to the leaders in the state for "unnecessarily opposing" the party over the revamp of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) in October.

Some disgruntled leaders had met at Siraj Mehdi's home in the first week of November. On November 14, they organised separate programmes to pay tribute to former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, instead of attending the one organised at the UPCC headquarters. Several leaders kept away from a meeting on Wednesday of former MLAs, MLCs and MPs called by UP Congress chief Ajay Kumar Lallu here to discuss ways to revamp the party, which took a severe beating in the last parliamentary elections. "I do not have any fights with anyone and I have been serving the party since the past 30 to 40 years," Mehdi, who now faces disciplinary action, had said on Thursday. In the backdrop of what we are getting to hear, we only want that our role in the party be defined," he had said. 

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