BHUBANESWAR: The demand for a change in the State leadership of the Congress has intensified after yet another MLA Adhiraj Panigrahi of Khariar said that the All India Congress Committee (AICC) should come up with a permanent solution to the problem plaguing the party.
Stating that the president of the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) Niranjan Patnaik has announced several times that he is a temporary president, Panigrahi said that corrective measures should be initiated to stem the rot. “For how many months, the party will be run with temporary arrangement,” he said and added that he should be changed immediately and a permanent president announced.
Panigrahi said that he is not opposed to Patnaik, but an alternative leadership should be installed which can pull out the party from the pathetic situation it is in now. Of the nine Congress MLAs in the State, Taraprasad Bahinipati, Santosh Singh Saluja and Mohammed Moquim have expressed concern over the party’s present and future situation seeking certain changes in the leadership even as all of them claimed that they are not opposed to the existing president.
Patnaik told mediapersons that he had tendered his resignation from the OPCC chief post after the party’s debacle in the 2019 General Elections. However, the AICC is yet to accept it. He said that efforts are on to strengthen the party at the grassroots level. Since 2000, Congress has changed the OPCC president nine times, but all of them failed to revive the organisation. Patnaik has been OPCC chief twice, first from 2011 to 2013 and he continues in the post since April 2018.