Last Update: January 18, 2023, 13:15 IST
Deepika Pushkar Nath said she is leaving the party on ideological grounds as Singh was responsible for botching the 2018 Kathua rape case (Twitter/@deepikaesrajawat)
Several months before the government fell, Singh resigned from the BJP in January 2018 following an uproar over his participation in a rally in support of the Kathua rape accused and formed the Dogra Swabhiman Sangathan Party (DSSP).
Jammu and Kashmir Congress spokesperson Deepika Pushkar Nath on Tuesday resigned from the party citing its decision to “allow” former minister Lal Singh to attend the Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Yatra, which is slated to end this week. will enter the Union Territory.
Nath said she was leaving the party on ideological grounds as Singh was responsible for subverting the 2018 Kathua rape case by “shamelessly defending” the rapists of an eight-year-old nomadic girl.
Singh, a two-time MP and three-time MLA, switched from the Congress to the BJP in 2014 and was also a minister in the PDP-BJP government that fell after the national party walked out of the coalition in June 2018.
Several months before the government fell, Singh resigned from the BJP in January 2018 following an uproar over his participation in a rally in support of the Kathua rape accused and formed the Dogra Swabhiman Sangathan Party (DSSP).
He defended his participation in the rally by saying that he was there to “calm down the situation”.
“In view of Ch Lal Singh’s offer to join @bharatjodo and @INCJammuKashmir, I am left with no other option but to resign from @INCIndia (). Rapist.
“Lal Singh divided the entire region of Jammu and Kashmir to protect rapists and @bharatjodo is ideologically opposite. On ideological grounds, I cannot share the party platform with such a person,” Nath wrote on Twitter.
A lawyer by profession, Nath took the victim’s parents to the High Court of Jammu to monitor the investigation and directed them to approach the Supreme Court to transfer the trial to Pathankot (Punjab).
Earlier in the day, AICC’s Jammu and Kashmir in-charge Rajni Patil told reporters here that any leader who believes in Gandhi’s ideology is welcome to join the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
Responding to a question that Singh’s involvement in the yatra may have created a wrong impression, Patil said, “We are only focusing on our leader’s march. If he believes that Gandhi should be of different religions and castes.” If they are bridging the gap, then they are welcome.” On Gandhi hoisting the national flag at Lal Chowk on 30 January, when the yatra was about to end, he said, “The tricolor always flies high. At our party office there.”
“We are not going ahead with the RSS agenda…we will hoist the tricolor at our party office at Lal Chowk (instead of the clock tower) which Gandhi is taking from Kanyakumari to Kashmir,” he said.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)