AAP’s Punjab in-charge Sanjay Singh quits post
Friday, 28/04/2017
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Chandigarh : Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders Sanjay Singh and Durgesh Pathak quit as Punjab party in-charge and co-incharge, respectively, on Thursday. The move came a day after the party faced a rout in the Delhi civic elections and its Punjab unit gunning for them.
“I have submitted my resignation from the post of Punjab in-charge to Arvind Kejriwal. Durgesh (Pathak) has also resigned from his co-incharge post for the state,” Singh tweeted in the morning on Thursday.
The last few weeks have witnessed growing voices of dissent amongst the Punjab state unit of AAP with senior party leaders like H S Phoolka, Sukhpal Khaira and Bhagwant Mann training their guns on the duo and repeatedly urging the party high command to assign responsibilities to leaders from the state and not ‘outsiders.’
The fissures in the relationships between Singh and Pathak on one side and Punjab party leaders on the other began a while ago when the infamous sting operation against the-then AAP Punjab convener Sucha Singh Chottepur came to the fore. The video clip showed him allegedly taking bribe for an assembly ticket. NRI supporters termed the sting a political ambush stage-managed by Singh and Pathak, five months before the state was going to the polls. This was said to be the beginning of the party’s downfall in Punjab.
Singh and Pathak also faced charges of taking money to allot tickets to candidates for the Punjab assembly elections. It did not help matters that AAP got the ‘outsiders’ tag as all important roles in the party were assigned to Singh and Pathak in Punjab.
