Senior Congress leader T.H.Mustafa, who called Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi a "joker" and demanded he quit party posts, has been suspended from the party. Addressing reporters, after the marathon 10 hours discussion of the executive of the state party unit to analyse the results of the Lok Sabha elections, Congress' Kerala unit president V.M. Sudheeran said the decision was unanimous.
"He made this remark openly, yesterday (Wednesday), when he was invited to take part in today's executive. The term he used 'joker' on Gandhi was extremely unbecoming on Mustafa's part and we decided to suspend him with immediate effect," said Sudheeran.
The 72-year-old Mustafa, a former minister and a five time legislator, was unfazed.
"I welcome the decision to suspend me. Look where the Congress party is now and Rahul Gandhi was the person who was spearheading the campaign and hence he has the responsibility. I did also mention that Priyanka Gandhi should take over as the new president," he said.
Former I&B minister Manish Tewari has said that two major factors--industry and the middle class--contributed to the Congress's loss in the Lok Sabha polls.
The two turned against the party as the UPA government continued with populist steps despite a nose-diving economy , allowing Narendra Modi to corner the two critical blocs and rise to the PM's post, Tewari said. He added that while issues like inflation, delays in environmental nod for projects and mining alienated the government further, the CAG's “damning“ 2G scam report landed a “deathblow from which we never recovered“.
No comments:
Post a Comment