Congress party general secretary Kamal Nath quit as the party’s Punjab affairs in-charge, just three days after he was given the post. He was facing fire over his alleged role in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
The Punjab state Congress also heaved a sigh of relief after Kamal Nath asked Congress president Sonia Gandhi to relieve him of the charge. Party spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala confirmed that his resignation had been accepted.
Several state Congress leaders and Nath himself had claimed that he had been absolved by the Nanavati Commission that probed the killings, which had followed the assassination of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984, by her Sikh bodyguards. But the emotive issue could have rocked the boat of the Congress in the assembly elections that are barely six months away.
Other political parties, including the Shiromani Akali Dal, BJP and the Aam Admi Party were unsparing in their attacks on Congress since Kamal Nath’s appointment as the state affairs in-charge. Kamal Nath had admitted before the Nanavati Commission that he was present outside Gurudwara Rakabganj when a mob had set it on fire after killing two Sikhs on 1 November 1984.
Though state unit chief Captian Amrinder Singh put up a brave defence for Nath at a press conference on Tuesday — and Nath too claimed he had been at the gurdwara "to save the Sikhs"— the party was at unease over the appointment as the ghost of 1984 came back to haunt it again after 32 years at a time when it’s dreading a third loss in a row in Punjab.
Nath, in his letter to Sonia on Wednesday, hit out at the SAD and AAP, saying that certain elements were raking up the issue to “malign the party for political gains”. “The Nanavati Commission set up by the NDA regime had absolved me. Even during a subsequent motion to discuss the commission’s report in Parliament, none of the Akali-BJP MPs, including (now deputy chief minister and SAD president) Sukhbir Badal, mentioned my name. Never in my long political career has any stigma been attached to my name,” he wrote.
His replacement is likely to be announced within this week, it is learnt.
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