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Lok Sabha Elections 2019: Congress leaders in Noida protest candidature of turncoat Chauhan
Lok Sabha Elections 2019: Several Congress leaders on Sunday voiced their opposition to Dr Arvind Singh Chauhan’s candidature from the Gautam Budh Nagar parliamentary seat, claiming he is not a member of the party and that he has never worked in the constituency for any social cause.
Several Congress leaders on Sunday voiced their opposition to Dr Arvind Singh Chauhan’s candidature from the Gautam Budh Nagar parliamentary seat, claiming he is not a member of the party and that he has never worked in the constituency for any social cause.
Protests began after the Congress announced Chauhan’s candidature late Saturday night. He contested the 2014 general elections from Aligarh on a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) ticket, losing to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Satish Gautam.
The district unit president of the Congress, Mahendra Nagar, and senior leader Raghuraj Singh have written to the central leadership, opposing the decision of giving ticket to a person who was in the BSP before announcement of his candidature.
“We have expressed our protest and written to Congress president Rahul Gandhi, party secretary Rana Goswami and senior leader Jyotiraditya Scindia, who is looking after ticket distribution in western UP. Ignoring the party’s workers, why have they fielded Chauhan, when he is not even primary member of the party?” asked Singh, who contested the Noida assembly seat for the Congress, in 2002 and 2007.
The party’s Gautam Budh Nagar unit is of the view Chauhan will not be able to fight the election effectively as party workers are not familiar with him.
“We have written to our central leadership requesting them to rethink over Chauhan’s candidature. Our party workers are dejected and disappointed because their demands have been ignored. Our party leaders said that they will field a local worker in the constituency, but they have fielded an outsider. We fear that Chauhan may withdraw his candidature midway because he does not believe in the party ideology, which is evident because he did not join our party before becoming a candidate,” Nagar said.
In the 2014 elections, the Congress candidate from the Gautam Budh Nagar Lok Sabha seat Ramesh Chand Tomar quit the party during the elections, joining the BJP a week before polling day.
“We hope the party’s central leadership will mull over our suggestion and give the ticket to a loyal party worker,” Nagar said.
Chauhan’s candidature from the Gautam Budh Nagar constituency has also been opposed by his family. His father, Thakur Jaiveer Singh, was a minister in the Mayawati government from 2007 to 2012, and is now a BJP leader, and member of the legislative assembly. He issued a statement on Sunday, claiming to have cut off all ties with Chauhan.
