Vijay Deo Jha
Ranchi, Mar 13: Hours before the meeting of the national working committee of the Congress, Dipika Pandey Singh on Sunday resigned from the post of national secretary and co-in-charge of Uttarakhand Congress.
She resigned while taking responsibility for the defeat of the Congress in the recently held assembly election of Uttarakhand. She is the MLA from the Mahgama assembly seat in the Godda district and is considered close to Rahul Gandhi. Her resignation has kicked up a storm in the party since the central leadership of the Congress has been facing criticism for the defeat the party suffered in five states. Reliable sources said that she was fed up with too much factionalism in the party that resulted in defeat.
“Taking responsibility for the defeat in Uttarakhand assembly elections, I have resigned as national secretary, co-in-charge of Uttarakhand. I thank the leadership for giving me an opportunity to serve the party at the national level,” she tweeted.
Her resignation will put a moral obligation on Avinash Pande. The question is being raised in the corridor of Jharkhand Congress whether Avinash Pande will also resign as a national general secretary while taking moral responsibility for the defeat of the Congress in Uttarakhand.
Avinash Pande, currently the in-charge of the Jharkhand Congress, was chairperson of the screening committee of Uttarakhand Congress that decided candidates. A similar whisper is going about Dr Ajoy Kumar, another top leader from Jharkhand who was a member of the screening committee.
Her resignation surprised her close associates for whom it was a bolt from the blue. “She was disappointed over the result because she had invested her time and energy to make the party win in Uttarakhand,” said one of her associates.
Despite the Congress miserably failing in Uttarakhand to unseat the BJP she as a co-in-charge had faired well. She was put in charge of 26 seats where Congress was relatively in a weak position. In the last assembly election held in 2017, the Congress out of these 26 seats had won only four seats. But the Congress in this election won 11 seats. The seat includes the Khatima assembly seat where the BJP’s chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami was defeated by Bhuwan Chand Kapri of the Congress.
