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Priya Dutt not to contest 2019 LS polls

Last Updated 03 May 2019, 10:50 IST

Two-time Congress MP Priya Dutt Roncon on Monday announced that she will not contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and she has decided to take a break from active politics.

The Dutt family are considered as the Nehru-Gandhi family loyalists — and this decision comes as a shocker.

Priya, 52, the daughter of the late actor-politician couple Sunil Dutt and Nargis, has represented the Mumbai North West and Mumbai North Central constituencies twice, however, she lost the 2014 elections to BJP's Poonam Mahajan.

Priya has been sulking for some time because of the faction-riddled Mumbai Regional Congress Committee, that has many power centres and equilibrium.

In a letter to Congress president Rahul Gandhi, she said, "politics requires a particular mindset that I do not have. However, I have great respect for those who do. They sacrifice their lives, their families, and their privacy to serve the nation."

She said her boys are 13 and 11 years old and that she had missed many special moments of her life as politics is a 24/7 job. "These are crucial years for my boys. Life is changing for them, as it is for me, and it is important for both of them to have both their parents around," she said.

Priya pointed out that her husband has steadily supported her all these years. "He has sacrificed much of his life to adjust to mine," she said.

Last year she was removed from the post of AICC secretary and since then there have been speculations about her future political course.

"I have never envisioned myself only being a politician or owning the permanent right to be the only INC contestant from the Mumbai North Central constituency. This constituency never belonged to my father, to me, or for that matter to any one person, it belongs to the people who make it," she said.

She also thanked former Congress president Sonia Gandhi for being her mentor and inspiration and that she drew strength from her.

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(Published 07 January 2019, 18:23 IST)

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