Congress disciplinary panel to decide fate of Jakhar, Thomas soon

New Delhi: The Congress Disciplinary Committee, headed by veteran AK Antony, will meet soon to discuss the cases of senior leaders Sunil Jakhar and KV Thomas. The panel had sent notices to the two leaders on April 11 following complaints against them for indulging in anti-party activities and had given them a week’s time to submit their replies.

Sources said that Jakhar did not reply to the notices and may now face an expulsion or a suspension as decided by the panel which is guided by the Congress constitution. “We will speak to the chairman and hold the meeting in a day or two” Tariq Anwar, a member of the disciplinary committee, said on Tuesday. Jakhar, a former Punjab unit chief, had allegedly made some derogatory remarks against former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi, a Dalit Sikh leader.

Channi had raised the issue with Rahul Gandhi, who had appointed him to the top post last year just months ahead of the assembly polls. Sources said there was a technical problem in the case of Jakhar as the AICC in-charge of Punjab Harish Chaudhary was not entitled to submit a complaint. Any such complaint should have come from the Punjab Congress, said the sources. The issue was discussed during a recent meeting of the disciplinary panel. The notice has assumed importance as a section of Punjab Congress wants Jakhar out given the party’s focus on regaining the Dalit votes in the northern state and elsewhere.

Rahul Gandhi, who recently met the new Punjab Congress team, told them that no indiscipline in the party would be tolerated however senior the person involved might be. Thomas, a former union minister, recently participated in a CPI-M meet against the party’s directive. He had reportedly been upset with the Congress after he was denied a Rajya Sabha seat while Jakhar was upset as he was not made the chief minister after the high command had decided to remove then chief minister Amarinder Singh last year. Congress leaders from the Dalit community, Udit Raj and Raj Kumar Verka had demanded that Jakhar be expelled from the party over his alleged remarks.

The disciplinary panel will recommend suitable action to party chief Sonia Gandhi, who will then take a final call on the matter. Earlier, the party had asked another Kerala leader Shashi Tharoor not to attend a seminar on the Centre-state relations held as part of the 23rd party congress of the CPI-M. Tharoor had abided by the party directive but Thomas decided to defy it, in a way provoking both the central and the state leadership. The Congress-led UDF had lost the last year's Kerala assembly polls to the CPI-M-led LDF, which had won a second consecutive term under chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan.