Chandigarh: Senior Congress Leader Manish Tewari took a swipe at Congress star campaigners list for the Punjab elections. He said that he would have been “pleasantly surprised” if his name was on the list, and said the reason for omitting him out was “no state secret”.
On Friday Congress General Secretary K C Venugopal, had released a list of 30-star campaigners. The list featured names of senior leaders including Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and Manmohan Singh.
Along with Tewari name of Ghulam Nabi Azad too was not mentioned. Incidentally, both are from ‘G-23’ rebel leaders who wrote to Sonia Gandhi last year, calling for radical changes in the party.
“I would have been pleasantly surprised if it would have been the other way around. The reasons are also no state secret,” Tewari said in response to former Congress MP Abhijeet Mukherjee, who pointed out that several senior Congress leaders had been left out of the list.
“Sad state of affairs in INC Punjab as they exclude a prominent senior congress leader, MP from Punjab & former minister Manish Tewari Ji from the list of star campaigners in poll-bound Punjab!” Mukherjee, who joined TMC last year, wrote. “Such narrow-minded steps will never help Congress to win elections!”
This decision of Congress not to include two senior leaders has gained a lot of criticism.
Earlier this week Congress had put out a star campaigners’ list for Uttarakhand, which named Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi but Navjot Singh Sidhu’s name was missing.
Gulam was targeted last month after he received Padma Bhushan, is also among the star campaigners in the hilly state of Uttarakhand.
Punjab was facing a lot of tussles last year, which led to the exit of Amarinder Singh. Amarinder’s exit mends the way for Channi to become the CM.
The party is yet to declare the chief ministerial candidate, which, most likely, will be announced tomorrow.
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