Stung by a series of poll reverses, the Congress on Thursday effected more organisational changes in some State units appointing new party chiefs. While former Minister Sunil Jakhar was appointed the new PCC chief for Punjab, replacing Amarinder Singh, who became the Chief Minister, Pritam Singh was made the new Uttarakhand Congress president replacing Kishore Upadhyay.
AICC secretary Avinash Pande, a former Rajya Sabha member and a former legislator from Maharashtra, was appointed the new general secretary incharge for Rajasthan, which goes to polls next year. He will be assisted in the State by a new team of four AICC secretaries that include Vivek Bansal, Qazi Mohammed Nizamuddin, Devendra Yadav and Tarun Kumar.
Early this week the party had removed Digvijay Singh as incharge of Goa and Karnataka for many years and also appointed senior party leader Ashok Gehlot as general secertary incharge of poll bound Gujarat by replacing former Union Minister Gurudas Kamat.
With this rejig, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi have initiated restructuring in the States of Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Goa. Congress’ organisational election process is underway and the party will be restructured by October.
Announcing the leadership changes, AICC chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala said the party have appointed 17 new office-bearers, 10 of whom are less than 50 years of age, and seven are from other backward classes and others belonging SCs and other classes.
The long-standing Gandhi family loyalist, Digvijay Singh was axed as the party’s general secretary incharge of Karnataka and Goa after his failure to form its Government in Goa despite having emerged as the single largest party in the Assembly election this February. While KC Venugopal was made general secretary incharge of Karnataka, A Chella Kumar appointed AICC incharge of Goa.
Not only this, last month in a sudden move the High command appointed Ashok Gehlot as in-charge of party affairs in Gujarat, replacing Gurudas Kamat. She also changed the entire central team handling party matters in Gujarat and assigned responsibilities to AICC secretaries Rajeev Satav, Harshvardhan Sapkal, Varsha Gaikwad and Jeetu Patwari, besides Gehlot.
In an effort to speed up the internal polls to meet the Election Commission’s deadline of December 31, the Congress chief also approved the composition of the Central Organisational Election Authority (CEA) to expedite the process of a revamp. The party’s internal elections, which are due every five years, have to end by December 31. The party has since sought three extensions from the EC. The grand old party has asked all State units to wind up the ongoing membership drive by May 15.