Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh Congress, on Sunday, expelled the ten senior leaders of the party who had been served show cause notices for holding meetings and criticising the decisions of the party.
The leaders had been given notices for indiscipline on November 21 and were asked to explain their conduct within 24 hours.
The leaders refused to reply to the notices and have now been sent expulsion notices signed by the disciplinary committee comprising former MLA Ajay Rai, Shyam Kishore Shukla and Imran Masood.
The leaders who have been expelled for six years from the party include former MP Santosh Singh, Haji Siraj Mehndi, former ministers Ram Krishna Dwiwedi and Satyadev Tripathi, Rajendra Singh Solanki, Bhoodar Narain Misra, Hafiz Mohd Umar, Vinod Chaudhary, Nek Chandra Pandey, Swayam Prakash Goswami and Sanjiv Singh.
Reacting to the move, senior leader Tripathi said: “On November 14, we came together at the residence of former MP Santosh Singh and paid tributes to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Since we are all politicians, we also discussed the state of affairs in the party and there is nothing wrong in it. Wanting to discuss things with the party high command is not indiscipline and if they present leadership thinks so, I have nothing to say.”
Talking to IANS, former MLC Haji Siraj Mehndi said: “We are all AICC members and the state unit had no authority to give us any such notice.”
The senior leaders had recently held meetings and had expressed their dissatisfaction over the manner in which all senior were being sidelined by the new committee.