Rohan Gupta quits Cong citing insult to Sanatan Dharma, character assassination by senior

In more trouble for the Congress, its National Spokesperson, Rohan Gupta, resigned from all posts and the primary membership of the party on Friday, citing “constant humiliation” and “character assassination by one of the senior leaders in the Communication Department” of the grand old party and insult to Sanatan Dharma.

The resignation by Rohan Gupta comes a day after the Congress was left red-faced on Thursday by senior leader Anand Sharma castigating the party and opposing former party President Rahul Gandhi's caste census promise. In a letter to party President, Mallikarjun Kharge, veteran leader Anand Sharma wrote that the Congress never engaged nor endorsed identity politics and hence it is detrimental to democracy.

Just a few days before his resignation on Friday, Rohan Gupta had withdrawn his candidacy from the Ahmedabad East Lok Sabha seat. Rohan Gupta’s father, Rajkumar Gupta, was once an MLA in Gujarat and had unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha elections in 2004.

In his resignation letter to Congress chief Kharge, Rohan Gupta said that he had served the party with honesty and sincerity with the support of the national leadership and it was the most “difficult decision of his life” to withdraw his candidature and put his personal ambitions aside.

Without naming anyone, Rohan Gupta stated that even as he was going through a personal crisis due to his father’s illness, the same leader had continued his smear campaign against him “for the last three days with the support of his close aides in Gujarat and at the national level.”

He wrote that he was going through a lot of “mental agony” and “stress” due to the leader’s behaviour and this had compelled him to resign.

Apart from the resignation letter to the party chief, the leader also put out a post on micro-blogging site X, which gave a larger picture of the infighting within the Congress.

In his emotional post on X, Rohan Gupta wrote, “I spent the last 3 days with my father while he is battling serious health conditions, which has really helped me understand his perspective.

“He narrated the incidences of betrayal and sabotage for the last 40 years and how the leaders got away in spite of their ill-doings. The wounds of those incidences have still not healed, which I could see in his tears.

“He doesn’t want me to pay the same price as the whole family has seen the mental trauma I have gone through in the last two years, which was caused by the senior leader connected with the Communication Department.”

He added, “I am not afraid of anything. But when there is a systematic conspiracy to betray me, I need to raise my voice. My humbleness should not be considered as my weakness. I have learnt my lessons the hard way. I took the most difficult decision of my life of withdrawing my candidature. Now I am taking another most difficult decision of leaving the party after serving it for the last 15 years because of constant humiliation and character assassination by the leader connected with the Communication Department.”

“The person who has humiliated me for the last two years, the person who has not budged from doing it in the last three days, I am sure that he will not refrain from doing it in future and nobody will be able stop him. But now I am not ready to take any more assault on my self-esteem,” he wrote in his post.

He continued that the same leader had damaged the Congress party also with his arrogant and rude behaviour.

“Due to his extreme Leftist mindset he ensured the party’s silence on insult of Sanatan Dharma which hurt me personally and I was forcefully stopped from opposition (to) insult of Sanatan Dharma on national TV. “This has done serious damage to the party’s image and to the morale of the party’s leaders. The leadership should not ignore such activities by such leaders which leaves imprints of insult on the souls of honest workers and leaders and compels them to leave the party. Some might see conspiracy here but people close to me will understand my viewpoint,” he stated in the post.