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A little over six months after he impressed the Congress’s national leadership by waving party flags in Sikh-dominated Tilak Nagar, marking the party’s return to an area scarred by the anti-Sikh riots, Arvinder Singh Lovely stepped down as the party’s Delhi Congress president for the second time in his career.
Pitching him as “Dilli ka Sardar”, the party was quick to declare the event a success at the time. A senior Delhi Congress leader said Lovely’s “proven success” at the rally paved the way for it to progressively reach out and tap into a larger section of Sikh voters in the Capital. His resignation, some in the state unit believe, is likely to hurt the AAP-Congress alliance in Assembly segments dominated by Sikhs.
“Many supporters, both dormant Congress workers as well as new ones, from the Sikh community who Lovely struck a chord with since October won’t be happy with the party over the allegations he has raised,” said the Congress functionary.
“This episode will have a negative impact on the AAP-Congress alliance in Assembly segments such as Tilak Nagar, Hari Nagar, Rajouri Garden, Laxmi Nagar, Civil Lines, and Jangpura, just to name a few which come under the West Delhi, North East Delhi, and Chandni Chowk Lok Sabha seats,” the leader added.
Congress insiders said Lovely had been given the impression that he would be among several old party hands who would get a Lok Sabha ticket. He is said to have wanted to contest more Delhi North East but was left miffed with the decision to give the ticket to Kanhaiya Kumar. In his resignation letter, the former Delhi Congress chief also took aim at All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge Deepak Babaria.
Hinting at more resignations and exits in the coming days, the party leaders said Lovely was among “a significant section of senior Delhi Congress leaders” who could “form a political, anti-corruption front” against the AAP in the National Capital.
“These are the same leaders whom the AAP daily targeted when it first arrived on the scene … Leaders such as Lovely, Sandeep Dikshit, and Rajkumar Chauhan (who quit the party last week) were told that they would be fielded in the Lok Sabha to reclaim their lost political ground,” said a Congress leader, adding, “But the party’s senior leadership, at Deepak Babaria’s suggestion, disowned them at the last moment and that too very disrespectfully.”
Lovely’s resignation came a day after more than a thousand members of the Sikh community, including office-bearers of the Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee, joined the BJP in the presence of its national president J P Nadda.
Criticising Lovely, the party’s former Congress Okhla MLA Asif Mohammad Khan said, “You can have complaints against Babaria, so go to the high command and get them sorted quietly. When Sheila Dikshit was made the DPCC president, she too was brought from Uttar Pradesh. Did Sandeep Dikshit ever question why his mother, an MP from UP, was given charge of the DPCC?”
Khan dismissed Lovely’s concerns about the alliance with AAP, raised in his resignation letter, saying, “Who was coordinating with the AAP? Lovelyji was going, Subhash Chopra was going, and Haroon Yusuf was going … I have been getting calls for several days too and being pressured into joining this bid … I will not do so and will remain with the Congress. Even I wasn’t in favour of allying with the AAP, but when the high command decided, we went ahead with the directions and will continue to do so.”
In 1998, Lovely became the youngest Delhi MLA and five years later, at the age of 30, became the youngest minister in the Sheila Dikshit government. Considered the then Chief Minister’s confidant, he received key portfolios such as Education, Transport and Urban Development during her three tenures. It was during his tenure that Delhi’s infamous Blueline buses were replaced with the green, red, and orange low-floor buses.
Lovely was the education minister when Delhi became the first to implement 25% reservation for children from the Economically Weaker Section in private schools. He was the Urban Development Minister when the approval to regularise unauthorised colonies was first made in 2012-’13. The plan, however, took a long time to get the Centre’s approval and implemented on the ground, which happened in 2018-’19 when the BJP was in power at the Centre.
Though targeted by the AAP over alleged corruption, Lovely played a part in giving “outside support” to the AAP in 2013, enabling it to form a government that lasted for 49 days. He was heading the Delhi Congress when the AAP handed the party a crushing defeat in the 2015 Assembly polls. Subsequently, Lovely resigned as the DPCC president for the first time.
In the middle of the 2017 municipal elections, he abruptly resigned from the Congress, blaming the Gandhi family for the state of affairs in the party. He immediately joined the BJP but, failing to make much headway there, returned to the Congress fold in early 2018. Being in the “good books” of the Gandhi family, he was the only leader from Delhi picked for its first-ever four-member Central Election Authority that presided over the polls in which Mallikarjun Kharge was elected the party’s first non-Gandhi president in 24 years in October 2022.
