‘Pawan Bansal ji is with us, he is always with party’: Rajeev Shukla after mass resignations in Chandigarh Congress

In an exclusive conversation with The Indian Express, Shukla said, “Bansal ji is with us. He is always with the party. These are temporary reactions which happen in every political party… They (those who resigned) are not against the candidate. They are not against the party…. They are reacting just to some statement of a party functionary. So we will definitely pacify them, will talk to them and resolve it”.

He added, “This always happens when elections are around the corner… something like this always happens … We will speak to them”.

Shukla, who is the party in-charge of Chandigarh, will visit the city on Thursday.

After his Instagram post over the candidatures of Manish Tewari created ripples, the party’s Chandigarh chief Lucky said he respects Bansal and claimed his social media account is being handled by university students. In a video message, Lucky said, “He is our senior-most leader, and he has appealed to everyone to get together and work in the election campaign now”.

Meanwhile, in their resignation letter to Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, party leaders said, “We all undersigned request you to remove Lucky from this post immediately if the Congress wants to win the seat of Chandigarh. Until then, we all are resigning from all our posts on the Chandigarh Congress committee”.

President of Chandigarh unit of Mahila Congress Deipa Dubey, who was among those who resigned, said they were not against the candidate but wanted Lucky to step down over his derogatory post against a senior leader.