Subhechcha Ganguly 
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday attacked INDIA ally Congress for fielding Chaudhary Lal Singh, who allegedly supported the accused in the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir, in January 2018. Chaudhary Lal Singh rejoined the Congress last month and is running from the Udhampur Lok Sabha constituency of J&K.Singh, a former leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), allegedly attended the gathering in support of the rape suspect, according to Vijayan.
At a press conference in Malappuram, Vijayan was cited by PTI as stating, “This clearly shows that the Congress is not taking a strong stand against the Sangh Parivar,” and he added that Singh was welcomed into the party by Rahul Gandhi.Following his return to the Congress last month, Chaudhary Lal Singh was fielded from the Union territory’s Udhampur Lok Sabha constituency. He plans to run in elections against Jitendra Singh, a minister in the Union. As a Congress candidate, he had won from Udhampur twice, in 2004 and 2009. In 2014, he joined the BJP. In 1996, 2002, and 2015, he was elected as an MLA to the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly as well.
Lal Singh was also a minister in Mehbooba Mufti’s PDP-BJP coalition government, which fell apart in 2018 after the saffron party withdrew its support, one year before J&K’s special status was abolished after Article 370 was repealed.After an outcry over his involvement in a rally in support of the suspects in the rape and murder of the eight-year-old girl in Kathua in January 2018, Singh resigned from the BJP and founded the DSSP some months before the Mufti government fell. He justified his attendance at the demonstration, nevertheless, by saying that his goal was to “defuse the situation”.
