Colonel Ajay Kothiyal (retd), who was the Aam Aadmi Party’s chief ministerial candidate in Uttarakhand assembly polls held in February this year, resigned from the party on Wednesday.
The former army officer announced his decision to quit the party on Twitter, posting a soft copy of his resignation letter on the microblogging site. The AAP had suffered a rout at the hustings with Kothiyal losing his deposit from the Gangotri assembly seat. ”I have been a member of the Aam Aadmi Party from April 19, 2021 to May 18, 2022.
In his resignation letter. he said he is quitting the party keeping in mind “the sentiments of ex-servicemen, ex-paramilitary, elderly, women, youth and intellectuals.”
There have been reports that Colonel Kothiyal was feeling sidelined by the party after the party’s electoral debacle in Uttarakhand. He had stayed away from a recent party function in Delhi in which Deepak Bali was appointed as the new chief of Uttarakhand unit of the party.
Colonel (Retd.) Kothiyal, an Indian Army veteran and former principal of Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM) at Uttarkashi, is known for his role in reconstruction of Kedarnath after the flash floods in 2013.
He shot to prominence in 2013 when he, with the help of an instructor, trained 30 youngsters of which 28 got recruited in the Garhwal Rifles.
He later in 2015 started a non-profit trust — ‘Youth Foundation’ — as more youngsters approached him. The ‘Youth Foundation’, which operates six camps in various districts of Uttarakhand, also helps in providing medical facilities to the poor people in Garhwal region.
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