Sanjay Jha suspended from Congress for 'anti-party activities

Mumbai, July 14: Congress leader and former spokesperson Sanjay Jha has been suspended for "anti-party activities and breach of discipline", the party's Maharashtra unit said on Tuesday.

The entrepreneur-turned-politician's suspension from the Congress comes weeks after he wrote a newspaper article critical of the country's oldest political party.

Jha has been suspended with immediate effect for anti-party activities and breach of discipline", Maharashtra Congress chief Balasaheb Thorat declared in a statement.

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Thorat is also a minister in the state, where the Congress is part of the Shiv Sena-led ruling coalition. Soon after the article appeared in a leading English daily last month, the Congress had removed Jha as a party spokesperson.

In the article, Jha had said, "The Congress has demonstrated extraordinary lassitude, and its lackadaisical attitude towards its own political obsolescence is baffling..."

"I would like to call a spade a spade here and a shovel: there has been no serious effort to get the party up and running with any sense of urgency, he had said in the article in 'The Times of India'.

There are many in the party who cannot comprehend this perceptible listlessness. For someone like me, for instance, permanently wedded to Gandhian philosophy and Nehruvian outlook that defines the Congress, it is dismaying to see its painful disintegration," he had written.