

Senior Congress leader A Saleem Ahmed visited Chennai to select district presidents ahead of the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections scheduled to take place in 2026.
Ahmed asserted that district presidents will be appointed after consulting every worker. He said that district presidents in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Telangana and Uttarakhand have already been appointed.
He said that the procedure is underway in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
Speaking to the mediapersons, Ahmed said he was here to discuss with all leaders, block presidents, workers, and frontal chiefs to choose district presidents.
He also highlighted that Congress supremo Rahul Gandhi wants to invite the district presidents to Central Election Committee meetings to gain an understanding of the prevailing ground reality.
"We will select block presidents and mandal presidents. We want to strengthen the organisation at the block level, booth level and district level," added Ahmed.
He asserted that during his two-day stay in Chennai, he had visited the central and southeast districts.
The development comes against the reforms, like empowering local leadership and making candidate selection more inclusive, as discussed at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) meeting in Ahmedabad on April 8-9.
Notably, the Congress appointed a five-member panel to engage in seat-sharing talks with DMK ahead of the 2026 Assembly polls in TN, while talks were doing the rounds over possibilities of Congress snapping ties with DMK and joining hands with actor-politician Vijay-led Tamizhaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK).
(With a few inputs from PTI)