Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge appointed Devender Yadav as the interim chief of the party's Delhi unit on Tuesday. This comes after Arvinder Singh Lovely resigned from the post citing his inability to continue without a free hand and criticising the alliance with AAP.
Yadav will continue in his role as AICC in-charge for Punjab. He won from the Badli assembly constituency in Delhi in 2008 and 2013 and lost to Ajesh Yadav of AAP in 2015. He is currently the All India Congress Committee's (AICC) Punjab in-charge.
In his resignation letter sent to the Congress president on Saturday, Lovely had said that he found himself "handicapped" as all unanimous decisions taken by senior Delhi unit leaders were "unilaterally vetoed" by the AICC's Delhi in-charge Deepak Babaria.
"The Delhi Congress Unit was against an alliance with a party which was formed on the sole basis of levelling false, fabricated and malafide corruption charges against the Congress Party. Despite that, the Party made a decision to ally with the AAP in Delhi...," Arvinder Singh Lovely wrote in his resignation letter.
Lovely was appointed to the post in August 2023.
In his letter to the Congress National President, Mallikarjun Kharge, Lovely said that all unanimous decisions taken by the Senior Delhi Congress leaders have been unilaterally vetoed by the AICC General Secretary (Delhi In-charge).
"Since my appointment as DPCC President, the AICC General Secretary (Delhi In-charge) has not allowed me to make any senior appointments in the DPCC. My request for the appointment of a veteran leader as Media head of DPCC was blatantly rejected. To date, the AICC General Secretary (Delhi In-charge) has not allowed the DPCC to appoint all Block presidents in the city. Resultantly more than 150 blocks in Delhi do not presently have a Block President," he said.
Lovely had also criticised Congress candidates -- Kanhaiya Kumar from North East Delhi and Udit Raj from North West Delhi -- for their statements and said tickets were given to two people who were total strangers to the Delhi Congress and party policies.