Congress president Sonia Gandhi has finally started the process of organisational restructuring in the crisis-ridden grand old party. After a series of debacles, including the just-concluded Rajya Sabha polls, Sonia on Sunday appointed senior party leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and Kamal Nath as general secretaries in-charge of the poll-bound States of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab respectively.
Former Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Azad, who is also leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, is a Gandhi family loyalist, while Nath is the senior-most MP in the current lok Sabha having won from his pocket borough of Chhindwara nine times. However, Nath’s appointment as in-charge of Punjab polls could spark a controversy due to his alleged role in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
Nath will also look into Haryana since the party has dropped Shakeel Ahmed as in-charge of both Punjab and Haryana. Madhusudan Mistry was looking after Uttar Pradesh, but he will still continue as the campaign committee chief of the party.
Sources said that poll strategist Prashant Kishor, who has been hired by the Congress to change the party’s fortunes in UP, had advised the high command to give Azad charge of UP to forge a comfortable equation of Muslims and Brahmins in the State for the 2017 Assembly polls.
Sonia effected the changes a day after the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha which saw cross-voting by some party MlAs in Uttar Pradesh and alleged faulty marking by its 14 legislators in Haryana, which led to their votes being declared invalid, resulting in the defeat of Congress-backed candidate RK Anand. There were allegations of internal sabotage at the behest of former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
While Sonia has set in motion the much-talked-about process of organisational changes ahead of the Assembly elections next year, the reshuffle by roping in old warhorses has come at a time when talk of Rahul Gandhi being elevated as party chief has again gained ground. “The appointment of seasoned politicians like Azad and Nath came amid calls for a major surgery from within the party following its recent debacles,” said a senior party leader.
Azad was earlier twice the AICC general secretary incharge of UP. Nath was a general secretary some 15 years back incharge of key States like Gujarat and West Bengal.
His name was doing rounds as the possible new party chief in Madhya Pradesh. In UP, the Congress had secured just two seats in the last lok Sabha elections with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi emerging victorious from their traditional seats of Rae Bareli and Amethi.
The Congress is in political wilderness in UP since 1989 following emergence of divisive ‘Mandal-Mandir’ politics and rise of the BSP, which took away its crucial Dalit vote base.
In Punjab, the Congress is in the Opposition for the last nine years and is making a determined bid to wrest power from SAD-BJP combine at a time when the AAP has also come up as a serious contender for power.