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May 25, 2022

Kapil Sibal Says He Has Quit Congress, to Contest for Rajya Sabha With SP's Support

"I had tendered my resignation from the Congress party on 16th May," Sibal told reporters today.
Kapil Sibal. Photo: PTI
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New Delhi: Congress leader Kapil Sibal has announced that he has resigned from the party and that he has filed his nomination for the Rajya Sabha polls with support from the Samajwadi Party.

“I had tendered my resignation from the Congress party on 16th May,” Sibal told reporters after filing his Rajya Sabha nomination.

“It is important to be an independent voice in parliament. If an independent voice speaks up then people will believe it is not from any political party,” Sibal said, according to NDTV.

He reportedly met Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav in Lucknow recently.

Sibal had been vocal with his unhappiness with Congress for a while now.

He was one of 23 senior leaders who had written a letter to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi in August last year, calling for “sweeping changes” and a democratic overhaul of the party to counter the BJP’s preeminence over India’s polity.

After the party lost in assembly elections to five states earlier this year, Sibal had choice words on the Congress’s leadership under the Gandhis.

“Leadership is in cuckoo land…I want a ‘sab ki Congress’. Some want a ‘ghar ki Congress’,” Sibal told Indian Express in an interview after the CWC turned down the Gandhis’ offer of resigning and voted to keep Sonia Gandhi on as president on March 13.

Sibal was not a member of the CWC.

At that time, several Congress leaders had spoken publicly against Sibal.

Even before this, after the party’s defeat in the Bihar assembly elections results, Kapil Sibal said that the party was no longer seen as an “effective alternative” by the people of the state and was in a “sorry state of affairs”.

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