Asha Kumari meets Sonia, rejects quit demands
Tuesday, 28/06/2016
http://epaper.dailypostindia.com/Details.aspx?id=159775&boxid=62932&uid=&dat=2016-06-28
New Delhi : A day after AICC secretary Asha Kumari was appointed as the party’s in-charge for poll bound Punjab affairs, she on Monday met Congress president Sonia Gandhi. It is learnt that they discussed among other things the raging controversy over her conviction in a land grab case. “Asha Kumar discussed certain issues related to Punjab,” said sources, claiming to be in the know of what transpired between the two. After meeting Sonia Gandhi, she rejected demands for her resignation, asserting she had the party chief’s ‘full mandate.’ She accused BJP, AAP and Shiromani Akali Dal of unnecessarily making an issue out of a ‘non-issue.’ “I am sorry, I cannot oblige them,” she told reporters, rejecting calls for her resignation.
“I have been given full mandate by the Congress president and vice president to work for the party in Punjab,” she said after her meeting. The appointment of Kumari, a niece of Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and four-term MLA from Dalhousie, has kicked up a storm after it emerged that she had been convicted in a land grab case in which she had allegedly transferred forest land to her husband. She was sentenced to a year in jail but it currently out on bail.
“It is for parties to decide who is going to lead the party. If somebody is there in government, it is a different issue,” she said, adding the AAP cannot decide who will lead the Congress in which state. Sources said Kumari will not continue as AICC secretary in-charge of Haryana, a responsibility she was handling for some time.
According to HER
The Congress is very much geared up to form the government in Punjab and BJP and others are scared.
The controversy would have no adverse fallout for the Congress in Punjab, not at all.
