Senior Congress leader and former Punjab minister Rana Gurmit Singh Sodhi on Tuesday resigned from the party, saying he was “deeply hurt by the bickering and in-fighting” within its state unit.
Sodhi, who is the MLA from Guruharsahai in Ferozepur district, was the sports minister in the state government led by Amarinder Singh, who quit as chief minister in September and left the Congress in November.
In his letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Sodhi said he was “deeply hurt by the bickering and in-fighting within the Punjab Congress”.
This is harming the party as well as causing “serious problems” for the state and the government, he said.
“I feel suffocated and helpless in the present situation especially when the party has put state’s security and communal harmony at stake. Rather than taking action to restore peace in Punjab, senior Congress leadership is hell-bent on destroying the border state for their personal gains,” he wrote.
“Agonised with the current state of affairs, I put my resignation from all posts and primary membership of the Congress party with immediate effect,” said Sodhi, who is considered close to Amarinder Singh.
Sodhi said he had been in the Congress for the last more than four decades.
“I had been hand-picked by our illustrious leader late Shri Rajiv Gandhi ji to contest my first election to the Punjab state assembly from Guruharsahai assembly constituency in district Ferozepur in 1985,” he said.
Stating that he had been a hardcore worker of the party with unflinching loyalty through thick and thin, he said he contested and won assembly polls from Guruharsahai four times from 2002 till date.
Sodhi was dropped as the minister after Charanjit Singh Channi took over as the chief minister.
