Nidae KashmirDeepika Pushkar Nath, Jammu and Kashmir Congress spokesperson, has resigned from the party it allegedly decided to “allow” former minister Lal Singh to join the Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Yatra which will enter the Union territory this week.
According to Nath, Singh was responsible for sabotaging the 2018 Kathua rape case by “brazenly defending” rapists of an eight-year-old nomadic girl.
“In view of Ch Lal Singh’s proposal of joining @bharatjodo & @INCJammuKashmir allowing the same, I am left with no other option but to resign from @INCIndia(.) Lal Singh was responsible in sabotaging the Kathua rape case in 2018 by brazenly defending rapists.
“Lal Singh divided the entire region of Jammu & Kashmir to protect the rapists and @bharatjodo is ideologically opposite. On ideological grounds, I cannot share the party platform with such a person,” Nath wrote on Twitter.
Singh, a two-time MP and three-time MLA, had joined the Congress from the BJP in 2014 and was also a minister in the PDP-BJP government which collapsed in June 2018 after the national party pulled out of the alliance.
Singh resigned from the BJP and floated the Dogra Swabhiman Sangathan Party (DSSP) following an uproar over his participation in a rally in support of the Kathua rape accused in January 2018.
He had defended his participation in the rally stating that he was there to “defuse the situation”.
Nath, a lawyer, took the parents of the victim to the high court at Jammu for monitoring of the investigation and also guided them to approach the Supreme Court for seeking a transfer of the trial to Pathankot (Punjab).
On Tuesday, AICC in-charge of Jammu and Kashmir Rajni Patil told reporters that any leader who believes in the ideology of Gandhi is welcome to join the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
“We are only focussed on our leader’s march. If he believes that Gandhi is bridging the gap between different religions and castes, he is welcome,” he said.
