Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) chief, Nirmal Khatri who seems to have get first major success after taking charge of the Party in the State by getting his loyalists inducted as incharges , had summoned them here at lucknow to hold a meeting on Friday. However it will be now a litmus test for him to show his capabilities especially when prominent leaders were not happy with the action taken against them by Rahul reportedly at behest of Nirmal Khatri.
According to spokesman of the UPCC, Amarnath Agarwal, state president will hold discussion with the eight zonal incharges as well as the newly inducted 31 district Congress chiefs. Agarwal claimed besides other policy matters and future election strategy; State president will discuss how to strengthen the organization particularly at ground level.
Sources confirmed that Nirmal Khatri so far found it very difficult to take any major decision at the organization level particularly in wake of Rahul Gandhi’s move to appoint eight high profile leaders which also included central ministers as zonal presidents and asking them to work directly under him (Rahul). However, when almost all the leaders concentrated more on nursing their own constituencies instead of contributing to strengthen the Organisation, Khatri reportedly briefed Rahul about it after which the Yuvraj’ finally made a crackdown on last Monday.
Sources further confirmed that now the move of Rahul led the resentment amongst some of the leaders who were shunted from zonal president’s post. We were removed citing AICC decision that those contesting Parliament
elections should not hold any organisational post as they could not do justice to two assignments so we just want to know that why the same yard stick was not adopted for UPCC president, Nirmal Khatri, who too will contest polls
from Faizabad", shouted a senior Congress leader who earlier submitted a report to Rahul Gandhi asking him to change all the district presidents in his zone just as they could not attract voters of their own communities. lets Nirmal Khatri, who get his men now appointed as zonal incharges, must come out honestly that how many days he spend at State head-quarter in strengthening the Organisation than he spent at Faizabad to nurse his own constituency since he took charge of UPCC", questioned another senior Congress leader who too is a Candidate for
next Parliament election. The leader further added that if they are removed as they had to fight next Parliament elections than why leaders like Anugraha Narain Singh or Vivek Singh, who were MlAs were also removed. The entire exercise we made to strengthen the Organisation now goes futile as suggestions we made to Rahul Gandhi for the same now remained on papers", the leader said adding that at least now Rahul should trust on his new team
suggested by Nirmal Khatri so that something could be done for betterment of the Organisation before next Parliament elections otherwise it will be turned out to be repeat of dismal show like last Assembly elections.
It may be mentioned that it exactly took eight months for Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi to draw conclusion that his selection of high profile leaders for the post of respective eight zonal presidents of the Party in the State is a wrong move. Congress “yuvraj" appointed eight presidents which included ministers Jitin Prasad, RPN Singh, Pl Puniya, Rasheed Masood, Rajarampal, Bijendra Singh, Vivek Singh, and Anugrah Narain Singh on September 20 last year. Now eight months later again on May 20, Rahul dismissed all these leaders from their posts reportedly as they failed to live to his expectations. Rahul now appointed eight new leaders which included Pankaj Malik, Deepak Kumar, Vinod Chowdhary, Digvijaya Singh, lalitesh Pati Tripathi, Bagwati Chowdhary, Sanjay Kapoor and Dr Muslim.