Congress President Sonia Gandhi is expected to execute another organizational shakeup shortly after the assembly elections in Bihar, introducing some new faces in different wings of the party, including the important communications department, people familiar with the development said.
A congressional official said, on condition of anonymity, that there are two vacancies when it comes to state managers.
While Shaktisinh Gohil is in charge of Bihar and Delhi, Dinesh Gundu Rao is in charge of Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Goa.
“Delhi and Goa are likely to have new managers,” he added.
In September this year, the president of Congress announced major organizational changes, revamping the party’s highest decision-making body, the Congressional Working Committee (CWC), and eliminating some key faces, including top leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and Mallikarjun Kharge, as general secretaries.
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She also formed a special five-member team to help her in day-to-day affairs and reconstituted the party’s Central Electoral Authority, which will conduct organizational polls to elect a new party president.
The shakeup came in the context of 23 congressional leaders, including four CWC members (Azad, Anand Sharma, Mukul Wasnik, and Jitin Prasada), who wrote to Gandhi on August 7, calling for full-time leadership and introspection. behind the “steady decline”. of the 135-year-old organization while outlining an 11-point action plan.
The official quoted above said that the head of the party’s Kisan cell, Nana Patole, is the chairman of the Maharashtra assembly, the chairman of the OBC (Other Backward Classes) department Tamradhwaj Sahu is the interior minister in Chhattisgarh.
In addition, the head of the Department of Programmed Castes, Nitin Raut, is the Minister of Energy in Maharashtra.
Surjewala, who is also the chairman of the party’s communications department, has been elevated to general secretary and assigned the post of Karnataka.
“All these vacancies will be filled soon,” the official said.
He said the move to renew the central electoral committee (CEC), a panel that finalizes congressional candidates for any election, was postponed due to the upcoming assembly elections in Bihar. “This will also be addressed after the Bihar elections,” he added.
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The committee to assist Sonia Gandhi in organizational and operational matters consisted of AK Antony, Ahmed Patel, Ambika Soni, KC Venugopal, Mukul Wasnik and Randeep Singh Surjewala, the party’s chief spokesperson. Wasnik was one of the signatories to the letter.
The five-member CEA will be headed by Madhusudan Mistry and the members are Rajesh Mishra, Krishna Byre Gowda, S Jothimani and Arvinder Singh Lovely, another letter writer.
Newly appointed general secretaries include Surjewala (Karnataka), Jitendra Singh (Assam) and Tariq Anwar (Kerala and Lakshadweep).
The new managers were Dinesh Gundu Rao (Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Goa), Manickam Tagore (Telangana), Vivek Bansal (Haryana), Pawan Kumar Bansal (administration), Rajeev Shukla (Himachal Pradesh), HK Patil (Maharashtra), Devendra Yadav (Uttarakhand), Manish Chatrath (Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya), Bhakta Charan Das (Mizoram and Manipur) and Kuljit Singh Nagra (Sikkim, Nagaland and Tripura).
Those who were retained as general secretaries are Harish Rawat (Punjab), Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (Uttar Pradesh), Oommen Chandy (Andhra Pradesh), Ajay Maken (Rajasthan) and KC Venugopal (Organization). Retained managers included RPN Singh (Jharkhand), Rajani Patil (Jammu and Kashmir), PL Punia (Chhattisgarh), Shaktisinh Gohil (Bihar and Delhi) and Rajeev Satav (Gujarat, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu).
The official further said that the high command of Congress will also shift its focus on the states, especially those that will go to the polls in the next two years.
Many state units will have new heads, he added.
Maharashtra’s head of Congress, Balasaheb Thorat, holds a ministerial position in the Shiv Sena-led coalition government in the state.
The head of the Odisha Congress, Niranjan Patnaik, had offered to resign from office shortly after the Lok Sabha elections, but was asked to stay. The congressional leadership had also rejected the party’s Punjab unit chief Sunil Kumar Jakhar’s offer to resign.
Last month, the leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury was appointed head of the party in West Bengal, which will go to the polls in April-May next year.
Along with West Bengal, assembly elections will be held in Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry. In 2022, state elections will be held in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur, Gujarat, and Himachal Pradesh.
The mega team of 56 secretaries of the All India Congressional Committee (AICC) will also see a major restructuring.
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