Congress leaders meet President over Delhi violence, demand Amit Shah's resignation over 'abdication of duty'

Reviving the ‘Raj dharma’ jibe, Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Thursday urged President Ram Nath Kovind to call for Home Minister Amit Shah’s resignation for the central government remaining “mute spectator” to “violence and looting” in Delhi in which at least 37 persons have lost their lives.

While Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh led a delegation of party leaders to Kovind to flag the “unprecedented violence" in Delhi, CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury wrote to Kovind seeking an appointment for Opposition leaders including him and those from DMK, NCP, Samajwadi Party, CPI and Loktantrik Janata Dal on the issue of disturbing situation in Delhi.

Gandhi, who had, after a CWC meeting on Wednesday, sought the resignation of Amit Shah, on Thursday urged the President to “act as conscience keeper” and immediately call for “removal” of the Home Minister given the “gross ineptitude, abdication of duty and his inability to contain the situation".

She told the President “you are given the highest possible responsibility under the Constitution of India to act as the conscience keeper of this Government and to remind it of its Constitutional duty and the pillars of Raj Dharma, by which any just government must abide.”

Congress has often fallen back on former Prime Minister of NDA late Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Rajdharma reminder to the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in wake of 2002-post Godhara riots, to browbeat the NDA government and particularly Modi. This time the target of Rajdharma jibe was Amit Shah.

Former PM Singh requested the President to “use his powe” to call upon the Central Government to protect and preserve its ‘Raj Dharma’ so that the citizens of this country and this national capital are assured of peace tranquillity and justice.

Noting that North East Delhi, has been gripped by a wave of violence that has only grown in intensity with each passing day, Gandhi rued that instead of taking active steps to remove, to remedy or diffuse the situation, the Central Government as also the newly elected Delhi Government, have remained mute spectators as completely mindless rage, designed violence and organised looting of property has continued unabated.