After Ghulam Nabi Azad, former Rajya Sabha MP Karan Singh’s ties with the Congress seem to be strained. The grand old party has been witnessing many exits from Jammu and Kashmir ever since Azad – who had been associated with the party for nearly five decades – snapped ties last month in a shock exit, dealing a huge blow to the Congress ahead of assembly polls due in several states.
Now Karan Singh has revealed his differences with the party while speaking to news agency. “I had joined the Congress in 1967. But in the last 8-10 years, I have no more been in parliament,” he said.
Sharing that he was dropped from the working committee, he added: “Yes, I’m in Congress but there’s no contact, nobody asks me anything. I do my own work. My relations with the party are almost zero now.”
Meanwhile, amid criticism for his party, the veteran leader also thanked the central government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for heeding the demands to declare Maharaja Hari Singh’s birthday as a public holiday.
“I’m delighted. It happened after a lot of effort. I congratulate the young generation of Jammu that carried forward the efforts. They did it together… nobody opposed,” Karan Singh, who is the son of Maharaja Hari Singh, said.
His sons – Ajatshatru and Vikramaditya – during their tenure at the Legislative Council “had made the House pass a resolution about the holiday.” the veteran leader recalled. “Nobody carried it forward. I’d like to thank PM Modi,I too had written to him for it.”
Speaking to reporters, lieutenant governor of Jammu and Kashmir, Manoj Sinha, hailed Maharaja Hari Singh as a “thinker, social reformer, and a towering man of ideas and ideals”.