The Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG) of retired civil servants has slammed the Congress for fielding Lal Singh, a former BJP minister who participated in a rally against the prosecution of the murderers and rapists of a child in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua in 2018.

The CCG missive came on Wednesday, a day after the last date of withdrawing nominations for the third phase of Assembly polls in the Union Territory. Deepika, the lawyer who represented the kin of the deceased child, quit as Congress spokesperson after Singh joined the Bharat Jodo Yatra last year.

Singh is contesting from Basohli in Jammu. The open letter to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge is endorsed by 96 signatories who served on the all-India as well as central services.

“After the success of the Bharat Jodo Yatra two years ago and the modest but significant gains in the Lok Sabha elections, we had come to believe that your party has given up its flirtation with soft Hindutva and that the politics of communal hate and division will be countered by renewing a Gandhian form of resistance of ‘Nafrat ke bazaar mein Mohabbat ki Dukan’ and of reaffirming the values inherent in the Constitution….

“The nomination of Chaudhary Lal Singh as a candidate shows that the rhetoric of bringing in a more value-based politics is both hollow and hypocritical. The decision sends a signal that when it comes to the pursuit of political power, your party is no different from those it is fighting against. It also shows that your sensitivity to Muslims, minorities and other oppressed and marginalised sections can be easily sacrificed at the altar of political expediency. This is a shame,” the retired civil servants said.

They added: “We know that the time for nominations as well as withdrawals is over and that our writing to you will not make any difference to the electoral contest. Despite that, we think it important to express our anger and our anguish…. We hope that, through this letter, we can make you realise that this kind of cynically expedient political practice will damage your attempts to gain the moral high ground for your party and that your much-vaunted appeal to reaffirm the Constitution will ring hollow.”