It would be a Gujarati vs Gujarati in Uttar Pradesh.
After a long wait, Congress president Sonia Gandhi has appointed Gujarat MP Madhusudan Mistry as the new AICC incharge of Uttar Pradesh to counter another Gujarati — Amit Shah — BJPincharge of UP. Mistry replaces Digvijay Singh. Sonia Gandhi also appointed four other secretaries to assist him. “Madhusudan Mistry has been selected to take head-on with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his team in UP during the coming lok Sabha elections,” Congress spokesman Amarnath Agarwal said.
The four new AICC secretaries and joint incharge of UP are Naseeb Singh, Prakash Joshi, Rana Goswami and Juber Khan. Parvez Hashmi, the deputy of Digvijay Singh was also not considered for the State. UP Congress president Nirmal Khatri has welcomed the decision of the party high command to appoint Madhusudan Mistry as the new incharge of the State. “The new team will certainly
boost the morale of the party workers in the State and will cross all the hurdles in the 2014 lok Sabha elections,” he said. Madhusudan Mistry was incharge of Karnataka, where the party returned to power recently. He was also attached to UP during the last lok Sabha and Assembly elections for screening the party candidates.
Meanwhile, two UP leaders — MlA Sanjay Kapoor and less known face Swaraj Jivan Balmiki have been appointed secretaries of the AICC. While Sanjay Kapoor is MlA from Rampur, Balmiki is a native of Mathura.