AICC member fires letter to Sonia Gandhi against giving RS nomination to Imran Pratapgarhi

AICC member Vishwabandhu Rai wrote a letter to Sonia Gandhi against giving a Rajya Sabha ticket to Imran Pratapgarhi from the Maharashtra quota citing injustice to local leaders. Poet-turned politician and AICC Minority department head Pratapgarhi had joined Congress in 2019.

In a sign of growing discontent among the senior leaders in Maharashtra Congress on the nomination, the party's state General Secretary Ashish Dekhmukh resigned after the decision while former CM Prithviraj Chavan had already showed his displeasure over the nomination to Pratapgarhi.   

Rai in the letter said, "The Indian National Congress was founded in Mumbai. There are many able, active, popular north Indian leaders, minority community representatives and Maharashtrians who can be given Rajya Sabha nominations, but have been ignored many times," and questioned if there is no importance of local leaders in the eyes of the central leadership, "Do senior party leaders think only those leaders are capable who can influence the central leadership by being in their good books?"

'Imran Pratapgarhi has been unsuccessful': Vishwabandhu Rai 

AICC member Rai further mentions in the letter, 'Imran Pratapgarhi has just joined the party, he has lost elections from the Moradabad constituency by a margin of over 6 lakh votes, he hasn't be able to lead the party to victory even in the elections of Municipal Corporation. Yet he was designated as the AICC Minority department head and now he is being nominated to the Rajya Sabha.' This is being seen as a case of minority appeasement by the people and party workers, Rai said and further argued the party is unable to please either the Hindus or the minorities by taking such decisions.

Congress nominates 10 other leaders to the Rajya Sabha     

The other candidates given Rajya Sabha nomination for the biennial elections include AICC general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala, Mukul Wasnik and CWC member Pramod Tiwari, from Rajasthan. From Himachal Pradesh, AICC head of Himachal Pradesh Rajeev Shukla and senior Bihar leader Ranjeet Ranjan.

Congress has fielded Delhi leader and AICC general secretary Ajay Maken from Haryana; P Chidambaram has been re-nominated from Tamil Nadu, Jairam Ramesh and Vivek Tankha have also been re-nominated from Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh respectively.

IMAGE: PTI