A day after the BJP appointed a new in-charge for its Uttar Pradesh unit, the Congress overhauled the zonal committees set up by Rahul Gandhi eight months ago to improve the party’s infrastructure in the crucial Hindi heartland state. And, in the process dropped two young Union Ministers - R P N Singh and Jitin Prasad - from the much-ballyhooed committees for “non-performance”.
Apart from Singh and Prasad, the other big-guns who got the axe as UP zonal presidents are: P L Punia, Rajaram Pal, Rashid Masood and legislators Vivek Singh, Anugraha Narain Singh and Nadeem Javed.
It seems, Rahul Gandhi‘s unhappiness with their performance, led to the complete overhaul, with the posts now going to local Congress leaders. In the AICC headquarters on Friday, the talk was that the “khas adamis” have been shown the door by the Congress high command to make place for the “aam admis’’ of the party.
The fact of the matter however is that, the parliamentary elections bugle has already been sounded in various quarters. At this stage, the Congress can hardly continue with dysfunctional zonal units in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh.
Though the rise of regional forces, SP and BSP, in UP politics has somewhat diminished its prominence in Indian politics, no party or coalition block has ever come to power in the Centre without doing reasonably well in the Hindi heartland.
The press note released by the party’s general secretary, Janardan Dwivedi announced the names of the new heads: Deepak Kumar, ex-minister Vinod Chowdhery, ex-MLA Digvijay Singh, Lalitesh Pati Tripathi, MLAs Bhagwati Choudhury, Dr Muslim and Sanjay Kapoor.
Eight coordinators too have been appointed. Some of them, the party sources said, have been asked to prepare grounds for contesting the next LS elections.