BHUBANESWAR: With the rift between the organisational and legislative wings widening, Congress launched patch up efforts keeping an eye on the panchayat polls scheduled in February, 2017.
Sources said that general secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge of Odisha B K Hariprasad will arrive here on Sunday to broker peace between the two factions. There is, however, no official word from the Congress in this regard.
Congress has also decided to launch a campaign from October 26 against the state government's failure to contain Japanese Encephalitis which has so far taken 65 lives.
Strong differences between the organisational and legislative wings came to fore during the meeting of the MLAs with party vice-president Rahul Gandhi at New Delhi on October 15 when several legislators raised the issue of organisational changes including the removal of president of the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) Prasad Harichandan.
Though Rahul Gandhi brushed aside the demand at the meeting, he had to again meet leader of the opposition in assembly Narasingh Mishra on October 17 to ways to revitalise the party in the State. The MLAs met several other leaders including Ahmed Patel, political secretary to party president Sonia Gandhi and V George, private secretary to the party president before returning to Bhubaneswar on October 18.
Sources maintained that the issue is yet to be resolved and there is lack of coordination between both the wings.
While the MLAs met President Pranab Mukherjee at New Delhi on the Mahanadi river water dispute with Chhattisgarh, the party president was visiting the Japanese Encephalitis affected villages in Malkangiri district.
Though Congress has five MLAs in the undivided Koraput district out of the total 16, none of them accompanied the state president's visit to Japanese Encephalitis hit Malkangiri district as it coincided with their meeting with the President at New Delhi over the Mahanadi issue.
Sources maintained that had there been coordination between the MLAs and the organisational wings, the party could have derived political mileage from both the issues.