Amid INDIA ally RLP’s ‘discontent’, Congress says ‘all okay’ as Kharge reaches out to Beniwal

A day after the Congress’s INDIA ally in Rajasthan, Hanuman Beniwal, the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) chief, expressed unhappiness over being ignored for the Opposition bloc’s meetings in Delhi, the Congress said on Saturday that “everything is fine” in the alliance.

Replying to a question about Beniwal’s concern at a press conference in New Delhi, the All India Congress Committee (AICC)’s general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal said, “I spoke to Hanuman Beniwal ji, he was very happy.” AICC general secretary in charge of communications Jairam Ramesh added: “Everything is fine, the news reports being printed (of discord) are all wrong.”

However, Beniwal had on Friday expressed his resentment over not being called to INDIA bloc meetings before and after the Lok Sabha poll results on June 1 and 5 respectively, claiming that the Congress had managed to open its account in Rajasthan thanks to the RLP. He had also asked when smaller allies from the South could be invited for these meetings, why not him.

A prominent Jat leader, Beniwal, 52, won from the Nagaur parliamentary seat for the second consecutive time by defeating the BJP’s Jyoti Mirdha by 42,225 votes. In 2019, he had won the seat in alliance with the BJP. However, he later parted ways with the BJP over the now-repealed central farm laws.

“I have a complaint that in INDIA alliance’s meetings, at the behest of some Congress party leaders, I was intentionally humiliated (by not being invited). But Hanuman Beniwal doesn’t care about these things, he started alone and has the power – an entire army (of supporters) stands with me in Rajasthan,” Beniwal had told reporters.

The Congress-led alliance won 11 of Rajasthan’s 25 seats in the elections, which ended a