Though Congress All India General Secretary, Madhusudan Mistri, who is incharge of Party affairs here in the State took off his second leg of tour in the Western UP along with state chief Nirmal Khatri to strengthen the Organisation on Tuesday, but sources said that the Party leaders who lined up before them for their welcome are now apprehensive whether they have that `power’ to change the Organisation at state and local level or Party’s youth scion Rahul Gandhi will once again go with another experiment sending some another leader to review the equations.
The apprehension was made following unnecessary delay in announcing the state and district level committees though the review and recommendations has been already made several times. Not only this, even State president Nirmal Khatri announced that he will declare his
committee soon and also gave dead lines twice since he took charge of the State but after he failed citing one or the other reason, now he even refused to give any time that when will be the job is completed. Surprisingly, the delay was made even when UP is on the top agenda of Rahul Gandhi and Parliament elections could be announced any time.
Not only this, his counter parts were way ahead with both Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party even declared majority of the candidates for Parliament elections and Bharatiya Janta Party is too in the field with new team of officer bearers. Sources said that a big number of old faces in the Congress who were seen welcoming Madhusudan Mistri during his recent visit to the State along with Nirmal Khatri, seems to have lost their faith in wake of failure of the local leadership to even declare the state as well as district level units. ``With majority of district level units already deemed to be dismantled after Rahul Gandhi turned down the proposals in 83 of the 114 units send few months back, there is no use of Mistri or Khatri taking meeting at local level to revive the Party", claimed a very senior leader and former MlA representing Eastern UP.
He said that the local leaders were confused that what yard-stick Rahul Gandhi wanted to apply or on which leader he had trust that so far he was turning down one after another proposal for constituting organizational teams. ``Initially the eight zonal presidents like Pl Puniya, Jitin Prasad, RPN Singh, Rasheed Masood, Rajarampal, Bijendra Singh, Vivek Singh, and Anugrah Narain Singh appointed directly by Rahul on September 20 last year threw suggestions made by them in last March for changes at district level organizations falling under their respective zones but Rahul turned it down reportedly citing that they gave `personal’ relations more important than `performance’ of the office bearers", pointed the former MlA saying that beside turning down the proposal Rahul also dropped all the above leaders from the zonal presidents posts on May 20 last saying that they could not do justice to the assignments. ``Everyone knew that the above leaders were not acceptable to Nirmal Khatri hence the state president not just get their proposal dropped but also managed to get them shunted out and replaced them with his own team after getting Pankaj Malik, Deepak Kumar, Vinod Chowdhary, Digvijaya Singh, lalitesh Pati Tripathi, Bagwati Chowdhary, Sanjay Kapoor, and Dr Muslim appointed as new zonal heads", pointed another senior Congress leader adding that they though that Khatri is most powerful leader in the State after that development. He claimed that they also realized the `power’ of Khatri as he got eight zonal presidents shunted out on the ground that they were concentrating on their own constituency than contributing anything for the Party but the fact was that Khatri himself spent majority of his time in Faizabad than he devoted in lucknow but this facts was overlooked by Rahul Gandhi while taking the decision of removing zonal heads.
However, the leader said that now even Khatri’s `power’ seems to come under review as this time he sent the names to constitute remaining 81 district level units on basis of recommendations made by new zonal presidents, but once again Rahul Gandhi put it on hold though citing tragedy occurred in Uttrakhand. But the said leader said that even this time Rahul Gandhi postponed the announcement as he had no trust on the local leaders particularly after going through his past experiment during the last Assembly elections. The leader claimed that now Madhusudan Mistri is on the hidden task to review the strength of the leaders whose names were recommended for the district level units so he was getting warm reply by the local Congressmen. However, he said that everyone was apprehensive that whether Mistri’s recommedations will once again met the same fate or this time Rahul will show some trust and go ahead with constitution of the new units soon after Mistri’s tour to all the eight zones will be over later this month.