NEW DELHI, MAY 6: Congress leader Akhilesh Das, who was dropped from the Union Council of Ministers last month, today resigned from the Rajya Sabha and the primary membership of the party, slamming a “coterie” around AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi. Das’s term in the Upper House was to run out in November.

As soon as Rajya Sabha assembled today, Das walked up to chairperson Hamid Ansari, shouting that he had lost “faith and confidence” in the Congress party and was, therefore, tendering his resignation. When Ansari refused to accept the resignation letter, Das handed it over to the secretary general and walked out.

Son of former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Banarsi Das, the former Union Minister attributed his move to the rise of a “coterie” around Rahul Gandhi which, he said, was becoming an “unconstitutional power centre”.

“I was appointed a minister by the Congress president. If I had been removed by the Prime Minister or the Congress president, I would not have said anything. But if a coterie decides the fate of people like me who have been in the Congress since birth, it is really an insult,” Akhilesh Das told The Indian Express.

Asked if he was planning to join the BSP, he said: “I will first discuss it with my workers and well-wishers. Then I will decide what to do. At the moment, I do not rule out anything.”

His softness for the ruling BSP in UP was evident from his resignation letter in which he alleged that the Centre had not provided additional funds to UP despite the fact that the state government had been demanding it.

He said he had been seeking an appointment with Rahul Gandhi for the past four months but the “coterie would deny me any access”.

“It is not just me. Many senior leaders and Cabinet Ministers have been getting the same raw deal,” he said.

In his resignation letter, addressed to Sonia Gandhi, Akhilesh Das pointed out that Rahul’s close aide Kanishka Singh’s father S K Singh was appointed Governor of Rajasthan even though he was believed to be close to Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and former External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh.

“No aide of any member of the Nehru-Gandhi family ever became so powerful that he could get his father appointed as Governor,” said Das in his letter. The same “coterie”, he alleged, got Rita Bahuguna Joshi appointed as UP Congress chief though she had lost her deposit in the last Assembly election.

“There is a coterie surrounding the ‘yuvraj’ and if the coterie is not happy with somebody, that person has to suffer,” he said. “If the influence of this coterie continues on yuvraj Rahulji, it will certainly have an adverse impact on his political future,” Das said in his resignation letter to the party president.

Rejecting his allegations, AICC spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan said Das had set an example of the “worst kind of political opportunism” and his resignation would have “no impact” on the Congress. On the alleged coterie surrounding Rahul Gandhi, she said: “We treat the allegations with the contempt they deserve.” She called it an outburst of a “frustrated spirit”.