Ten suspended All India Congress Committee members from Uttar Pradesh on Monday claimed they had been victimised under Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s leadership and warned of a statewide movement “to save the real Congress” from the “fake Congress” if party chief Sonia Gandhi did not intervene.

The suspended leaders, all veterans who have spent three to five decades with the party, said either Priyanka had been kept in the dark about the state unit’s decision or the Congress general secretary was misinformed about them.

The allegation came at a media conference the suspended veterans addressed at the press club here.

Priyanka was not available for comment but Ajay Kumar Lallu, recently appointed state unit chief, said the suspended leaders had been “going against the decisions of the high command”.

Santosh Singh, a former Congress MP and one of the suspended veterans, said he and the others had met at his Lucknow residence on November 14, the birth anniversary of independent India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

“We discussed the Centre’s wrong decision to withdraw Special Protection Group cover from members of the Gandhi-Nehru family…. Some members were of the view that old Congressmen were being sidelined and not being given any assignment,” Singh said.

“Then we read in newspapers on November 23 that the disciplinary committee of the state unit of the party has served us notices to explain our anti-party conduct. On November 25 we read that we have been suspended because our reply was not convincing,” Singh added, claiming that none of them had received any notice or given any reply.

Singh said that Priyanka had either been kept in the dark about the decision to suspend them or was misinformed. Either way, he said, it was an unfortunate reflection on the high command.

Priyanka, appointed Congress general secretary for eastern Uttar Pradesh ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, now virtually handles party affairs in the whole state.

Ram Krishna Dwivedi, a former MLA, said the decision went against the party constitution.

“Section 19 A of the constitution of the Congress says that only the disciplinary committee of the AICC can take such a decision against an AICC member after giving seven days to explain their conduct. In this case, the state unit president claimed he had suspended us,” Dwivedi said.

“We want Congress president Sonia Gandhi to intervene immediately or we would fight against the fake Congress leadership which has suspended true Congressmen.”

All the suspended leaders were present at the media conference except one who had excused himself for a wedding in the family.

The leaders, who included veterans like Satyadev Tripathi, Vinod Chaudhary, Nekchandra Pandey, Swayam Prakash Goswami and Bhudhar Narayan Mishra, said they would hold a meeting in Lucknow on November 30.

The next meeting would be in Noida towards the end of December, they said, adding that public meetings would follow in east Uttar Pradesh and Bundelkhand where they would “narrate to the people how the fake Congress is taking over the true Congress in the heartland”.

Lallu said the suspended veterans, who had all started their political career with the National Student Union of India or the Youth Congress, had been refusing to accept the central leadership’s decision to appoint him state unit chief.

“They were going against the decisions of the party high command and the disciplinary action was taken after serving notices to them,” Lallu told reporters at the party office after the media conference by the suspended leaders.

Goswami, former president of the state NSUI and the Youth Congress, rejected Lallu’s claim. “Either Priyanka is completely ignorant of this episode or she is part of a conspiracy against us for unknown reasons. I was the first to give the slogan ‘Priyanka lao, desh bachao (Bring Priyanka to save the nation)’. But now we are victims under her leadership.”

Another Congress leader, who has been supporting the suspended veterans, told this newspaper that seven among the 10 were Brahmins, while two were Rajputs and one was a Muslim.

“There is a demand within the party to give prominence to Brahmin leaders to defeat the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. But our high-command is creating a situation in which these leaders may be misused by the saffron brigade,” this leader said, asking not to be named.

“Lallu is from an other backward class and he should have focused on expanding the base of the party within that community. But he convinced Priyanka to victimise those who have given their life to the Congress.”