Congress leader Harish Rawat on Wednesday suggested that the party leadership was not being supportive ahead of the Assembly elections in the state.

In a series of tweets, the Congress leader hinted that the top leadership had left him alone in the state to deal with certain matters.

“Isn’t it strange that the organisational structure at most places, instead of extending a helping hand, is standing with its head turned away or playing a negative role at a time when I have to swim across the ocean of elections,” he tweeted. “The powers that be have left crocodiles in the ocean that I have to swim in.”

Rawat claimed that the followers of those whose orders he had to follow had tied up his hands and feet.

“I am getting a lot of thoughts in my head that Harish Rawat, it is enough, you swam for a long time, it is time to rest,” he said. The Congress leader added that he has also thought that he should not escape from the challenges.

“I am in a dilemma,” the former Uttarakhand chief minister said. “Hope the New Year shows me the way.”

Later on Wednesday, when reporters asked him about the tweets, Rawat said he will speak about it when the time comes, reported ANI.

In Uttarakhand, Rawat had asked the Congress in January to declare a chief ministerial candidate for the 2022 Assembly polls, arguing that it would end factionalism within the party and clear confusion among workers, reported the Hindustan Times.

He had urged the party leadership to declare Pritam Singh, who was then state Congress unit chief, as the chief ministerial candidate for the upcoming polls. Rawat had said that he did not have a problem with party leader Indira Hridayesh being a possible candidate. She, however, died in June.

This is not the first time Congress leaders have spoken against the party leadership ahead of the elections.

The party’s unit in Punjab, which is also going to the polls next year, had in the past few months been in turmoil due to infighting between the former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and state President Navjot Singh Sidhu.

The turmoil resulted in Singh quitting the party, saying that he “felt humiliated”.

Rawat, who was the person in charge for Punjab, had tried to control the infighting. He had countered Singh’s allegations that Congress humiliated him, saying that “the party has always given him respect and treated him with high regard”.

Meanwhile, Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat said that Harish Rawat’s comments would benefit the saffron party, as it showed that Congress was not able to stay united, ANI reported.

“Considering the way he [Harish Rawat] is expressing his pain, I feel he should take some rest,” Tirath Singh Rawat said.