Ex-minister resigns from Congress, saying she felt humiliated

Rajkumar Chauhan, a former Delhi Congress minister, resigned from the party, citing mistreatment by a high-ranking official after he questioned the methodology used to choose the candidate for the North West Delhi seat.

Days after a group of Congress workers shouted slogans outside the Delhi Congress headquarters during top officials’ introduction of three party candidates to run in the capital’s May 25 Lok Sabha elections, he announced his resignation.

Chauhan was a candidate for the one reserved seat in the capital for the scheduled caste group, however he was passed over.

AICC in-charge for Delhi Deepak Babaria asked Chauhan, a four-time MLA and a minister for 15 years in the Sheila Dikshit government from 1998 to 2013, to “get out” of the meeting room. Chauhan claimed he was merely attempting to express party workers’ feelings regarding the choice of the candidate for North West Delhi.

“I was yelled at and told to leave the room.” Get out three or four times in front of everyone, he instructed me. It was really demeaning and embarrassing. Can’t we have a party meeting in a private room to voice our opinions? Chauhan inquired.

But according to Babria, Chauhan stepped down in order to avoid the party’s decision to discipline him. “Once a candidate is announced, you need to honor the party’s honor. He used profanity and made outrageous accusations about the candidate. He disregarded all rules of decorum and left the party gathering. Babaria said, “We had started a disciplinary procedure against him.

When asked whether he intended to “damage” the Congress in the polls, Chauhan said that he had no intentions to join any other party or form a new front in Delhi.

In May 2019, Chauhan also left the Congress after being refused a ticket to run in the Lok Sabha elections and joined the BJP. However, he joined the Congress again before to the 2020 Delhi assembly elections.

Party insiders said that further resignations may occur in the coming days due to simmering dissatisfaction among party workers in Delhi about the choice of candidates for three seats that had come within Congress’s purview as a result of the seat-sharing agreement with AAP. They said that angry Congressmen in Delhi may establish a new political front. As members of the opposition INDIA alliance, the AAP and Congress are contesting the election together in the capital.