UP Congress Unit Targets Party Leader Jitin Prasada For Dissenting Tones; Kapil Sibal, Manish Tiwari Support Him

Senior Congress leader Jitin Prasada, who has placed himself at the forefront of taking up the issue of the alleged Brahmin victimisation and persecution in the state, is facing criticism from within the party.

The Lakhimpur Khiri unit of Congress has attacked Prasada. The reason: he is one of the Congress leaders who wrote a letter to Sonia Gandhi, calling for visible leadership and reforms.

A Congress unit in the state has demanded action against him. It has passed a resolution "for being one of the 20-odd signatories to the letter that a group of senior party leaders had written to Congress president Sonia Gandhi."

The letter was discussed by the Congress Working Committee.

A resolution passed by Lakhimpur Kheri district Congress committee has said: “The District Congress Committee (DCC) demands that disciplinary action should be taken against all those who signed the letter and they should be expelled from the party.”

Their grouse seems to be that Prasada is the only leader from the state who has signed the letter.

The resolution said: "...his family has been against the Gandhi family. His father the late Jitendra Prasad had contested the election against Sonia Gandhi. Despite this, Sonia Gandhi gave him a Lok Sabha ticket and he was made a minister. His act is gross indiscipline and action should be taken against him."

Prasada has been consistently raising the matter of Brahmin victimisation in Uttar Pradesh, and recently requested MLAs to take up the issue in the ongoing Vidhan Sabha session in the state. He has also placed a request for declaring Parshuram Jayanti as a holiday.

Prasada has now found himself in the middle of internal politics in the state unit.

A post on Twitter from veteran Congress leader Kapil Sibal points at the development.

In the post, Sibal said that "Jitin Prasada is being officially targeted in UP."

Senior Congress leader Manish Tewari reacted to Sibal's post.

Last month, Prasada had issued a statement on the letterhead of 'Brahman Chetna Parishad'. He had said a dialogue through social media platforms towards uniting Brahmins must be initiated.

The Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee seemed distancing itself from Prasada's move. The UPCC president Ajay Kumar Lallu had reportedly said that "it is Prasada's personal issue and that he had nothing to say about the outfit."