In a demonstration of the few choices the Congress has in Gujarat and Bihar, where it has been languishing in the opposition for over a decade, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday appointed Arjun Modhwadia Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee President and Sadanand Singh new Legislature Party leader in Bihar.
The vacancy in Gujarat arose after PCC chief Siddharth Patel and Congress Legislature Party leader Shaktisinh Gohil submitted their resignations in October last year, taking moral responsibility for the party's humiliating defeat in the district, taluk panchayat and corporation elections. Mr. Gohil still continues in his post.
Mr. Modhwadia was CLP leader in Gujarat in the past; he quit the post shortly after the Congress was trounced in the Assembly elections in 2007.
In Bihar, in the Assembly elections last year, the Congress won just four seats, shrinking from nine. The then-CLP leader, Ashok Ram, lost his seat, creating a vacancy. Mr. Singh, an eight-time MLA and former Speaker as well as PCC chief, is the seniormost of the four MLAs who were elected last year. He was therefore, the only choice for CLP leader, party sources told The Hindu . A question mark also hangs over Mehboob Ali Kaiser, the current PCC chief, who was appointed in the run-up to the Bihar Assembly polls. He was a comparatively new face; but he too failed to energise the moribund party organisation in the State.
Limited choices
Clearly, in Gujarat and Bihar, where the Congress is finding it hard to make a recovery, the party's choices are extremely limited – the same people keep circulating, quitting after electoral defeats, and being resurrected again, when their replacements fail.
In the coming days, party sources told The Hindu, the Congress leadership will have to make changes in Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Chattisgarh where it is in the opposition, and in Rajasthan where it is in power. In Madhya Pradesh, CLP leader Jamuna Devi died recently, creating a vacancy, and there has been talk for a while in party circles that PCC chief Suresh Pachauri may be deployed elsewhere. In Rajasthan, PCC chief, C.P. Joshi, became a Union Cabinet Minister last year – and the State needs a new PCC chief.
Two tricky States where changes are still due are Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. In the former, the political turmoil over Telangana has made it difficult for the party leadership to announce whether PCC chief D. Srinivas (from Telangana) will continue or be replaced, because that would send out a political message, and the party wants to maintain a low profile there.
In Maharashtra, where the Chief Minister was replaced a few months ago, the party has to replace PCC chief Manikrao Thakre.
Last October, minutes before he was to address a press conference, the microphones picked up Mr. Thakre gossiping with a party colleague about collecting money from State Ministers for a party rally, thus causing huge embarrassment to the Congress. Ms. Gandhi, as part of a revamp of the party organisation, had appointed 18 PCC chiefs at the time. The only significant ones then were in Punjab and Karnataka, where the appointments of the former Chief Minister, Amarinder Singh, and Dalit leader and former State Minister G. Parmeshwar were seen as a bid to strengthen the Congress in those States.
The third new face had come from Nagaland, where elections produced a change, with S.I. Jamir defeating the incumbent, I. Imkong. Nagaland was one of the seven States and Union Territories which chose the election path: the others were Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Lakshadweep; but all these six retained their PCC chiefs after elections.
However, Ms. Gandhi had, at the time, decided to retain the PCC chiefs of Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Assam, West Bengal, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Puducherry, and Uttarakhand.
