Congress rejig: Venugopal proposes, Kharge endorses

New Delhi: An uninspiring reshuffle that is unlikely to enthuse the cadre is how the cosmetic changes in the Congress can be summed up.

The organisational reshuffle carried out by the Congress seems to have a clear stamp of general secretary organisation KC Venugopal with party chief Mallikarjun Kharge signing the dotted lines.

The grand old party was expected to make some big changes and send a strong message to leaders and workers after being battered by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the recent assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

Instead, it brought back some old faces who had miserably failed in their earlier roles.

Take for example Avinash Pande, who has been shifted from Jharkhand to Uttar Pradesh. Prior to that, Pande was in-charge of Rajasthan where he played an important role in aggravating the crisis that erupted due to a revolt by the then deputy chief minister and state unit president Sachin Pilot against former chief minister Ashok Gehlot in July 2020. Pilot then nearly brought down the Congress government in the state.

He was unceremoniously removed from Rajasthan and later sent to Jharkhand where he had frequent run-ins with Chief Minister Hemant Soren to the extent that the two ruling alliance partners, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and the Congress, were on the verge of breaking their ties. Now, he has been given the charge of the all-important state of Uttar Pradesh and holds the key to power at the Centre.

Pilot, whom the Gehlot camp squarely blamed for the party’s defeat in the recent assembly elections in Rajasthan, has been moved out of the state. Since Gehlot has not been brought to the national level, Pilot’s exit from Rajasthan means that the former chief minister will get a free hand in running the party affairs in the desert state.

Similarly, Mohan Prakash, who is an old Janata Dal hand, will now be in-charge of Bihar where he will be dealing with his old colleagues Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad. He had earlier held the charge of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, and during his tenure, the Congress performed poorly in those states.

A Chellakumar has been rewarded for his failure to revive the Congress in Goa, Odisha and West Bengal. He will now look after the party affairs in Meghalaya, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh.

While Bharatsinh Solanki has been moved out of Gujarat and given the charge of Jammu and Kashmir to give free scope to state unit chief Shaktisinh Gohil, Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa will continue to look after Rajasthan despite having failed to help the party retain power.

Devender Yadav, whose tenure as in-charge of Uttarakhand saw the Congress unable to oust the BJP despite the hill state having the tradition of throwing out an incumbent government every five years, has been shifted to Punjab.

The reshuffle has failed to cheer up the Congress cadre demoralised after the drubbing in three states. "Khoda pahad nikla chuha (mountain made out of a molehill),” is how a senior leader described the rejig.

Another leader said the reshuffle is like fielding an under-19 cricket team against a strong and winning international team in the World Cup final match in an apparent reference to the BJP and the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.