Rajasthan: Cong leader, party candidate engage in heated argument at Kota meeting

Senior Congress leader Shanti Dhariwal and his rival-turned-party colleague Prahlad Gunjal, who joined the Congress from the BJP recently and has been pitted against Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla in Kota-Bundi, got into a heated argument during a party meeting here on Friday.

The meeting at the Congress' Kota district office also witnessed intermittent sloganeering by supporters of the two leaders, who had faced each other in the assembly polls a few months ago.

Dhariwal won the assembly elections in December by a small margin from the Kota North constituency.

At the Congress meeting on Friday, Dhariwal asked Gunjal to withdraw his allegations of corruption in the Chambal riverfront development project made against him during the assembly poll campaign. The senior Congress leader also said that when Gunjal paid him a courtesy visit at his house Thursday evening, he had raised the same issue.

''I asked him to either prove the allegations or make a statement that those allegations were false,'' Dhariwal said.

He then asked Gunjal, who joined the Congress earlier this month after 40 years in the BJP, to shed his ''communal politics'' and turn secular.

To which, Gunjal responded, ''Despite being in politics of BJP, I have never been communal and a senior leader like you should not use this type of language.'' The Congress candidate left the meeting soon after. While leaving the venue, he told reporters: ''I do not tolerate any insult so easily and there was no such thing. What I found wrong, I stood up and objected to it.'' At the meeting, Dhariwal also asked party workers to ensure Gunjal's victory.

During the assembly poll campaign, Gunjal had targeted Dhariwal with allegations of corruption in the Rs 1,400-crore Chambal riverfront development project.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)