NEW DELHI, Feb 15: The Congress suffered yet another major setback on Tuesday as the former union law minister Ashwani Kumar quit the party ending his 46-year-long association with the party.
Kumar sent his resignation to the Congress president Sonia Gandhi saying he can best serve national causes outside the party fold. “Having given my thoughtful consideration to the matter, I have concluded that in the present circumstances and consistent with my dignity, I can best subserve larger national causes outside the party fold,” Kumar said in his resignation letter.
“I am accordingly quitting the party after a long association of 46 years and hope to proactively pursue public causes inspired by the idea of transformative leadership, based on the dignitarian promise of a liberal democracy envisioned by our freedom fighters,” the former Rajya Sabha MP said.
Later he said quitting the grand old party was a “painful decision” for him but after giving a lot of thought he realised that he “cannot make a useful contribution to the public and political discourse in the country at this critical time within the framework of the Congress party.” He felt that the Congress had “ceased to be the mouthpiece of national aspirations and does not promise a transformative leadership to the nation,” though he personally had high regards for the interim national president Sonia Gandhi.
He said the internal processes of the party diminished individual leaders, which collectively debilitated the party and his hopes for correctives stands had been belied. “The spectacle in Punjab has further convinced me that the Congress has lost its moorings as a party of progressive change.” he said.
According to him, the continuous decline of the Congress in terms of vote percentage, in terms of popular support clearly showed that the party was out of sync with the way the nation think. “It is the function of a political party to both gauge the national mood and where necessary to transform it. Can anybody seriously or honestly deny that this has not been the case with the Congress party,” he asked. Kumar leaves the Congress in the midst of Assembly polls in five States and ahead of the February 20 election in his home state Punjab.
His resignation comes close on the heels of a spate of resignations, the most recent being that of another former Union Minister R.P.N. Singh. A number of party leaders have quit the Congress in the recent past. These include Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasada, Sushmita Dev and Louisinho Faleiro.
(Manas Dasgupta)