New Delhi: The rejig in the Congress continued Thursday with the replacement of two state party chiefs and one general secretary holding charge of a key state. Punjab CM Amarinder Singh, who was also Punjab PCC chief, was replaced by senior Congress leader Sunil Jhakhar as state party head. Uttarakhand Congress chief Kishore Upadhayay, who was at loggerheads with former CM Harish Rawat, has been replaced by four-time MLA Pritam Singh, a former state home minister.
The Congress also accepted the resignation of Gurudas Kamat as general secretary in charge of Rajasthan. AICC secretary Avinash Pande, a former Rajya Sabha member and a former legislator from Maharashtra, was appointed the new general secretary in charge of Rajasthan, that goes to the polls next year. He will be assisted by a new team of four AICC secretaries, including Vivek Bansal, who hails from Uttar Pradesh, Qazi Mohammed Nizamuddin from Uttarakhand, Devendra Yadav and Tarun Kumar, both from Delhi.
The Congress also appointed Rajya Sabha MP Vivek Tankha, a senior advocate, as chairman of its legal cell. This position has been vacant for the past five years, and was last held by Abhishek “Manu” Singhvi.
The restructuring has a judicious mix of old guard and new faces. The party has named 17 new office-bearers, 10 of whom are under 50, and seven belong to the other backward classes.
Since its drubbing in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, there have been strong demands for a restructuring of the party organisation. But there have only been some piecemeal changes. After its rout in the recent Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand Assembly polls, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had also said the party needs to go in for “major restructuring”.
Interestingly, the Congress is quiet in states like Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, which too will hold Assembly elections along with Rajasthan in November 2018. There have been demands in Madhya Pradesh too to change the general secretary in charge, Mohan Prakash. The general secretary in charge of Chhattisgarh, B.K. Hariprasad, has already resigned from his post, but the high command has asked him to continue.
In the past fortnight, the Congress has replaced the in-charges of Goa, Karnataka, Gujarat and Rajasthan. By the end of this year, the Congress needs to complete its internal elections. At present, the party membership drive is on, and is due to get over by May 15. The election to the post of Congress president is due to be completed between September 15 and October 15 this year. After that an AICC session will be held, where a new Congress Working Committee will be constituted.
