Saturday, 09 March 2024 | PNS | DEHRADUN
Resignation being perceived as big jolt to Congress & major psychological advantage for BJP ahead of Lok Sabha polls
The Congress party in Uttarakhand received a major jolt ahead of the crucial Lok Sabha elections when senior leader Manish Khanduri resigned from the party on Friday. His resignation is being perceived as a jolt to the Congress party because the party had included his name in the panel of candidates from the Garhwal Lok Sabha seat. Khanduri took to social media to inform about his resignation from the primary membership of the Congress party. “I have taken this decision without anticipation or expectation of any personal gain,’’ said Khanduri on his social media account.
Speculations are rife that Khanduri will soon join the BJP. The BJP State president Mahendra Bhatt is learnt to have sent feelers to Khanduri.
It is pertinent to mention here that Manish Khanduri joined the Congress party on March 16, 2019 in presence of Rahul Gandhi in a rally at Parade Ground in Dehradun. He was given the Congress party’s ticket from Garhwal in the Lok Sabha elections of 2019, a constituency represented by his father in the past. In this election BJP gave its ticket to Teerath Singh Rawat, a protégé of his father major general (retd) Bhuwan Chandra Khanduri, who defeated Manish Khanduri with a massive margin of more than three lakh votes. In the last five years Khanduri remained active in Garhwal and had taken up the issue of justice for the family of Ankita Bhandari.
Reacting to the resignation of Khanduri, the former Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president Ganesh Godiyal said that Khanduri’s sudden resignation is unfortunate and unjustified. He said that Khanduri always said that he had joined Congress on the basis of his ideology. Godiyal said that he still believes that Khanduri will stand by his ideology. He added that the doors of the Congress party are still open for Khanduri. Congress leader Dhirendra Pratap has also expressed surprise at the resignation of Khanduri.
