BHUBANESWAR: President of Congress Rahul Gandhi will visit Odisha next month to meet workers at the grassroots level and senior leaders in a bid to boost the morale of the party rank and file ahead of the elections in 2019. Announcing this after the first meeting of the coordination committee here, president of Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) Niranjan Patnaik said the State unit is planning for Gandhi’s Odisha visit in August, most possibly after August 20.
This will be the first visit of Gandhi to the State after Patnaik took over as the OPCC president from Prasad Harichandan on April 19, 2018.Patnaik said a decision was also taken to initiate measures to strengthen the Congress from the block to State level, so that the party can fight the 2019 elections successfully. Besides, decision was taken to appoint a senior leader to be in-charge of each of the 30 revenue districts, he said and added that responsibility of parliamentary constituencies will also be entrusted to separate leaders.
AICC Odisha in-charge Jeetendra Singh, Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Narasingh Mishra and other members of the committee attended the meeting. The AICC president had approved a 31-member coordination committee headed by Singh on Saturday. Former minister Jagannath Patnaik is the convenor of the committee.
However, delay in the appointment of the State office-bearers of the party still remains a concern. Though party leaders are tight-lipped about the reason behind the delay in the appointment of office-bearers, political observers believe that intense factionalism has come in the way of the announcement. However, working president of the OPCC Naba Kishore Das said office-bearers list will be announced within a week.
Meanwhile, differences between Opposition chief whip and senior Congress leader Tara Prasad Bahinipati and party legislator Krushna Chandra Sagaria have been resolved after intervention of Singh. While Bahinipati said there are no hard feelings now, Sagaria maintained that there will be unity in the party, no matter how big the differences are.