In a desperate efforts to keep the Party united in the election year, state president Nirmal Khatri adopted `please all’ formula and finally announced a jumbo size Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) comprising of 288 office bearers, on Thursday. Except for Rita, none of the Congress presidents had such huge committee.
However, what is interesting is that Khatri, who so far refused to speak anything against union minister for Steel Beni Prasad Verma, despite of his open attack, finally opened card by keeping away all Verma’s loyalists like Raj Bhadhur Singh (who remained even acting president of UPCC for some time), Siddharth Srivastava, JP Singh, DK Anand etc away from PCC. Now with Verma’s loyalists out from UPCC, it is to be seen that whether Khatri would also succeed in keeping away union minister’s men for whom he was trying ticket for coming Parliament elections.
The above step of Khatri also pointed what he and AICC general secretary, Madhusudan Mistri, who is incharge of Party affairs here in UP had said recently that they will not speak anything against Verma before media but appropriate action will be taken within the Party.
Besides the above, though no official order has been released but new UPCC clearly pointed that Khatri decided to withdraw the zonal system which has been adopted by Rahul Gandhi, who appointed eight zonal heads to strengthen the Congress. Initially Rahul on demand of Khatri had changed the zonal presidents appointed by him and posted Khatri’s loyalists. Now Khatri had adjusted all his team members engaged as zonal heads in the UPCC, which pointed the end of zonal system. Not only this, Khatri also dared to include Subodh Srivastava, as vice-president, even when Srivastava, who was then a chief spokesman of UPCC during Rita Bahuguna’s regime was the first who openly protested before Rahul Gandhi for refusing to give him Assembly ticket in last elections.
Sources said that earlier Khatri tried to appoint Subodh, again as incharge of media when he took charge of president but due to opposition, he changed his mind.Keeping everyone guessing about PCC since he took charge as state president in August 2012, Khatri announced the Committee after seeking approval of the party high command and AICC general secretary and in-charge of Madhusudan Mistri,on Thursday. The committee includes 32 vice-presidents, 61 general secretaries, one treasurer, 13 organising secretaries, 134 secretaries and 45 executive members besides two special permanent invitee members -- legislature party leader in the assembly Pradeep Mathur and leader of the party in the legislative council Naseeb Pathan. Harish Bajpai will be the treasurer of the committee while Satya Dev Tripathi will be the Vice-president in-charge of communication department. The spokesperson of the UPCC and the presidents of different cells would be announced later on.
The other prominent whose name figures in the UPCC list are - Rajesh Pati Tripathi, Vinod Chowdhary, Deepak Kumar, Digvijay Singh, Haji Siraj Mehndi, Pankaj Malik, Dr Mohd Muslim, Shiv Balak Pasi, Ganesh Shankar Pandey, all as vice-presidents, lalitesh Pati Tripathi, Virendra Singh Guddu, Ishwar Chandra Shukla, Shyam Kishore Shukla, Ramesh Srivastava, Maroof Khan, Ansuiya Sharma, Deepak Singh, Onkar Singh, Pramod
Singh, all general seretaries, Shakeel Farooqui, Tariq Siddiqui, both organising secretaries, and Ashok Singh, Tarun Patel, Virendra Singh, as secretaries. Nirmal Khatri became the UPCC president in August 2012 after Rita Bahuguna Joshi stepped down following the assembly debacle and the committee was announced now just before the lok Sabha elections.
