Congress’s Jaipur pick for Lok Sabha polls stirs controversy | India News

NEW DELHI: Sunil Sharma, Congress’s Lok Sabha candidate from Jaipur, has denied having any association with the Jaipur Dialogues platform, and called the attempts to link him to it “completely fake news”.
The controversy around his candidature erupted after some users on social media highlighted that Jaipur Dialogues, which usually propagates content critical of Congress, has Sunil Sharma as one of its directors.
Responding to the allegations levelled against him, Sharma said he had severed ties with the platform long back and that “false propaganda is being floated to diminish the prospects of the Congress Party”.
Sharma claimed that he never had anything to do with the management of the Jaipur Dialogue YouTube channel and that he was often invited on all news channels and YouTube channels as a panellist on “building an inclusive India as per the Congress philosophy“.
“I have long ago severed relations with the directorship of Jaipur Dialogue Forum (which has nothing to do with the ownership of YouTube) about which some people, due to their vested interests, are spreading rumours,” Sharma wrote on X.

Tharoor takes ‘Pauline Epiphany’ dig

Amid the controversy over Sharma’s candidature, Thiruvananthapuram MP and Congress leader Shahi Tharoor reacted to the social media posts by the Jaipur Dialogues, which had targeted him.
“He must have undergone some sort of Pauline epiphany on the road to 24 Akbar!” This is just one of several dozen tweets from his handle attacking me,” Tharoor wrote on X.

After being chosen by the Congress high command on Thursday to contest from Jaipur in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, Congress leader Sunil Sharma asserted that the people of Jaipur are eager to bring change in the impending election.
“Jaipur has not been able to secure its place among the top 25 clean cities in the country, which is quite painful. If Jaipur continues like this, it will not remain liveable, hence the people of Jaipur want a change. And I believe that this election will be an election of momentous change,” he told ANI.
Sunil Sharma’s name was announced by the grand old party in its third list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, including five from Rajasthan.