Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee
president Jai Prakash Agarwal today resigned from his post in the wake of party's severe drubbing in the polls in which it could manage to win only eight seats in the 70-member Assembly.
Sources said Agarwal sent his resignation to Congress President Sonia Gandhi in which he cited the party's electoral debacle as the reason for his stepping down.
Congress suffered its worst defeat in the assembly elections on December 4, following which a number of senior party leaders, including Sheila Dikshit, had blamed the DPCC chief for its poor performance.
Even three-time Chief Minister Dikshit was defeated by Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in the New Delhi constituency by a huge margin of over 25,000 votes. Four Cabinet ministers and Speaker of the House had also lost the election.
Agarwal is not known to share a good equation with Dikshit as both of them differed on many crucial issues in the run-up to the polls. He was unhappy with Dikshit's push for giving tickets to all the 43 sitting MLAs.
Last week, Dikshit had attacked Agarwal saying he did not enthusiastically back her in the polls.
Giving reasons for the defeat, she had also said that the party was not active and there was absence of coordination between it and the government in Delhi.
"The party was not active enough," she had said, elaborating that though her government had prepared a lot of documentation about the work done by it, the party merely told the people "bahut kaam hua (lot of work has been done)". That is not enough, she had said.
In a meeting on Thursday with Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, Congress MLAs had reportedly told him that Agarwal had not put in enough efforts in the elections. A number of other Delhi Congress leaders in the last few days had also conveyed their unhappiness over Agarwal's functioning during the elections.
