In a move seen as a snub to party leader Jitin Prasada, the Congress has constituted committees to prepare for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections but kept him out. Jitin, a former Union Minister of State, was among the Congress leaders who wrote a letter to party interim chief Sonia Gandhi on the leadership issue.
Sonia Gandhi has constituted the ‘Manifesto Committee, Outreach Committee, Membership Committee, Programme Implementation Committee, Training and Cadre Development Committee, Panchayati Raj Election Committee, and Media and Communication Advisory Committee of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee, said a press release from Congress leader K.C. Venugopal.
The Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections are likely to be held in February-March 2022.
Almost all senior leaders have been accommodated—Salman Khurshid on the Manifesto Committee, Pramod Tiwari on the Outreach Committee, Rashid Alvi on Media Advisory Committee. Noor Bano, Anugrah Narayan, and Rajesh Mishra have also got appointed to various committees.
Jitin Prasada was one of the signatories to the letter written in the recent past by Congress leaders to demand visible leadership and organisational elections.
The appointments were made after nine senior leaders, expelled from the Congress last year, sent the letter to Sonia Gandhi, urging her to “save the party before its slips into history”
Jitin Parasad’s loss seems to be Salman Khurshid’s gain. Khurshid had backed the Gandhi family when 23 party leaders wrote the letter to Sonia gandhi, saying it was time for a consensus, not elections. “I have said very clearly that the Gandhis are leaders of the Congress. Nobody can deny this. Even the opposition cannot deny this… I don’t worry about whether or not we have a president. We have a leader (in Rahul Gandhi) and that is comforting for me,” Khurshid had told PTI in an interview.
After the “letter bomb— where senior leaders like Ghulam Nabi Azad, Kapil Sibal, Shashi Tharoor and Anand Sharma had pushed for change in the Congress’ leadership—all of them got left out from a list of big promotions handed out by Sonia Gandhi.
Gaurav Gogoi and Ravneet Singh Bittu were appointed deputy leader and whip in the Lok Sabha. Senior leader and former Union minister Jairam Ramesh, who was not among the dissenters either, was appointed Chief Whip of the Congress.
With agency inputs