PATNA: Bihar Congress is poised to witness a major organisational revamp in near future with the state party president Madan Mohan Jha resigning from his post on Thursday.
Jha's term had come to an end about six months ago. Jha was summoned to New Delhi by the party high command on Tuesday and was subsequently asked to resign. He also met Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in the national capital. Jha's resignation letter has been accepted, party sources confirmed on Thursday.
Jha, a former minister, was appointed state Congress president on September 18 in 2018 after Ashok Choudhary was removed from the party post in July 2017. He had offered his resignation soon after the results of Bihar assembly held in 2020 owing responsibility for the party's poor performance.
Reacting to his resignation, senior Congress leader and MLC Prem Chandra Mishra said on Thursday that it was an internal matter of the party as changes kept happening in the party`s organisation. “This is not an unusual development (resignation of Jha)”, he remarked. Jha, who is currently in New Delhi, said his tenure had already come to an end. Hence it was a routine affair to hand over the resignation to the party high command. “What is new in it. It happens in every political party and the Congress is no exception,” he asserted.
The Congress during the tenure of Jha had sought to convey a message to the RJD that the grand old party was not ready to play second fiddle to it anymore in Bihar. In the assembly polls, the Congress could win only 19 out of 75 seats offered to it under seat-sharing formula among the constituents of the Grand Alliance. After the Congress contested the 2020 state assembly elections in an alliance with the RJD, the party fielded its candidates in Kusheshwar Asthan and Tarapur by-polls, much to the chagrin of the RJD. The Congress even went to the extent of exiting from the grand alliance as the party was annoyed with the RJD, particularly for not conceding Kusheshwar Asthan seat to it. The Congress could not win any seat in the by-polls.
RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav has already clarified that his party’s alliance with the Congress existed only at the national level and not in Bihar. It has been a mixed fortune for the Congress in the elections held during the tenure of Jha. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, it was only Congress that won a seat in the state when even RJD had drawn a blank. But the Congress could win only 19 out of 70 seats in the 2020 Bihar assembly election.
In the recently concluded Bihar legislative council elections, Congress supported Independent candidate emerged victorious in East Champaran while its own candidates won from Begusarai. But for anyone assuming the post of BPCC president, his most daunting task would be to strengthen the party`s organisation as, without it, the party could not be able to shine in elections.
Presently, Congress has no presidents in the state's three districts. Earlier, Jha had offered to resign after the party's dismal performance in the 2020 state assembly elections by owning moral responsibility for it but the high command did not accept it. The names of Vijay Shanker Dubey, Rajesh Ram, Kanhaiya Kumar, Meira Kumar, Ranjeet Ranjan, Mohammad Javed and others were doing the rounds for the state chief of the party. Meanwhile, the 'Gandhi Sandesh Yatra' to be launched from Champaran region on April 17 has been postponed in the wake of new development.