Congmen continue to vacate top posts

New Delhi: The mass resignations in the Congress continued on Saturday as several party leaders resigned from their posts taking responsibility for the poor show in the Lok Sabha elections. These include Chhattisgarh Congress in-charge P L Punia, AICC secretary and Rajasthan co-in charge Tarun Kumar and Kisan Congress president Nana Patole.

As many as 36 office-bearers of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee resigned from their posts on Saturday. Among them were Congress leader in Legislative Council Deepak Singh, the state unit's senior vice-president Ranjit Singh Judev, general secretary Aradhna Mishra Mona and vice-president R P Tripathi, an official release of the party said.

The resignations come just days after Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, who is adamant on quitting his post, had lamented that nobody in the party had come forward to take responsibility for the poll debacle. Earlier, UP unit chief Raj Babbar had quit after the party could win only Rae Bareli seat in Uttar Pradesh and even lost its traditional stronghold of Amethi.

Till now, over 130 Congress leaders have resigned, including Telangana in-charge Poonam Prabhakar, Bihar in-charge Virendra Rathore, Youth Congress vice-president Srinivas, Delhi Congress Working president Rajesh Lilothia and Anil Chowdhary, Madhya Pradesh in-charge Deepak Babaria and Goa in-charge Girish Chowdhankar.

Among the Uttar Pradesh Congress members who quit their party posts were media coordinator Rajiv Bakshi, joint media coordinator Piyush Mishra, Onkar Nath SIngh, Amarnath Agarwal and Mukesh Singh Chauhan, Priyanka Gupta and Ashok Singh.