The Mallikarjun Kharge-led party has dismissed Acharya Pramod Krishnam for six years in spite of him being a Priyanka Gandhi teammate. Acharya Pramod Krishnam had recently commended Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the consecration ceremony of the Ayodhya Ram temple and chastised the Congress for missing it.
Acharya Pramod Krishnam was ejected on Saturday, the Congress claims, due to his “indiscipline” and repeated remarks critical of the party.
Who is Acharya Pramod Krishnam?
On a Congress platform, Acharya Pramod Krishnam ran for Lok Sabha in 2019 from Lucknow but was unsuccessful. But he received a whopping 1.8 lakh votes.
Acharya Pramod had run unsuccessfully from Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
- Acharya Pramod was previously a member of the Uttar Pradesh advisory council of the Congress, which was established to support Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in her capacity as the party’s UP leader.
- According to The Indian Express, Acharya Pramod’s pouting may have something to do with the Samajwadi Party’s announcement of candidates for both Sambhal and Lucknow, seats he has been considering.
Why was Acharya Pramod Krishnam expelled from Congress?
- Acharya Pramod was in Lucknow earlier this week to invite Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to the foundation-laying ceremony of Kalkidham in the Sambhal district of Uttar Pradesh on February 19, even though the Congress did not precisely cite the events for which he has been expelled.
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will lay the foundation stone there that day, also recently visited with him.
- All India Congress Committee general secretary KC Venugopal said in a press release that the “Hon’ble Congress president has approved the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee’s proposal to expel Pramod Krishnam from the party for six years in view of his repeated anti-party statements and complaints of indiscipline.”
- Congressmen were apparently alarmed by Acharya Pramod’s remarks, which praised the prime minister for building the Ram Temple while criticising the party for declining the invitation to the consecration, despite his insistence that his visits to Modi and defence minister Rajnath Singh were only intended as invitations to the Kalki Dham inauguration.