NEW DELHI: Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who promised key changes in the 133-year-old party at its recent Plenary Session, made a slew of important changes in the organisation on Friday. In a significant move, Rahul appointed veteran Ashok Gehlot as the AICC general secretary in charge of the organisation and training in place of Janardan Dwivedi, who held the post for over a decade.
Keeping his promise to give key party roles to younger leaders, Rahul appointed his close aides Rajeev Satav and Jitendra Singh as AICC in-charges of Gujarat and Odisha respectively. Satav replaced Gehlot, who was made in-charge of Gujarat last year and worked closely with Rahul during the 2017 state assembly polls. Satav, a former Youth Congress chief and Lok Sabha member from Hingoli in Maharashtra, assisted Gehlot as one of the four AICC secretaries there.
With Gehlot, who was former Rajasthan chief minister, being moved to Delhi, state unit chief Sachin Pilot, another Rahul aide, would get a free hand ahead of the assembly polls later this year. Satav’s appointment comes days after Rahul named veteran MLA Amit Chavda as the new Gujarat unit chief in place of Bharatsinh Solanki.
However, reviving the Congress in Odisha will be an uphill task for Jitendra Singh, who replaces veteran BK Hari Prasad. Singh, former Lok Sabha member from Alwar in Rajasthan and a former Union minister in the previous UPA government, had submitted a report to Rahul on how to strengthen the party in Odisha, where assembly polls will be held along with the 2019 national elections.