The party names in-charges for nine states and general secretaries for two; six leaders who held these posts, notably in Haryana, were ousted.
The Congress made a significant organisational change on Friday, which was influenced by senior leader Rahul Gandhi, just days after losing the Assembly election for the third time in a row since the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Six leaders were removed from their roles, and two states were given general secretaries, while nine states were given in-charges.
The Congress appointed Bhupesh Baghel, the former chief minister of Chhattisgarh, as the general secretary of Punjab and brought him into the AICC secretariat. In charge of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, Syed Naseer Hussain, a member of the Rajya Sabha, was appointed general secretary.
Hussain succeeded Gujarati politician Bharatsinh Solanki as general secretary in charge of J&K, while Baghel relieved Devender Yadav, who continued to manage Punjab despite being named Delhi Congress chairman last year.
Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the general secretary of the AICC, are close to the majority of the new hires. For example, Baghel likes to have good interactions with Priyanka.
It seems that Hussain, who is seen as close to Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, is the exception. He was the Karnataka Rajya Sabha MP who oversaw Kharge’s office.
Rajani Patil (Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh), B K Hariprasad (Haryana), Harish Chaudhary (Madhya Pradesh), Girish Chodankar (Tamil Nadu and Puducherry), Ajay Kumar Lallu (Odisha), K Raju (Jharkhand), Meenakshi Natarajan (Telangana), Saptagiri Sankar Ulaka (Manipur, Tripura, Sikkim, and Nagaland), and Krishna Allavaru (Bihar) are the new state leaders.
In the past, the majority of these leaders have held organisational positions. A general secretary in charge of multiple states, for example, is Hariprasad. He has now been demoted to in-charge, which is a demotion. Chaudhary and Patil have also served as supervisors. Prior to the reorganisation, Chodankar was in charge of Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura, and Manipur.
Ulaka, Raju, and Lallu are new hires as supervisors. They are all thought to be close to Rahul.
The national coordinator of the SC, ST, OBC, and minority departments of the Congress is Raju, a former bureaucrat who has worked closely with Rahul. Lallu was the previous chief of the Uttar Pradesh Congress. The Youth Congress is now led by Allavaru. He was appointed to lead Bihar in the year before the state’s elections. Natarajan was the previous leader of the Rajiv Gandhi Panchayati Raj Sangathan of the Congress.
Dipak Babaria is one of the six departing leaders. He was the leader of Haryana after the party lost the state’s Assembly elections the previous year.
Ajoy Kumar (Odisha, Tamil Nadu, and Puducherry), Rajeev Shukla (Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh), and Mohan Prakash (Bihar) are the other departing general secretaries and in-charges in addition to Solanki (Jammu & Kashmir) and Yadav (Punjab).
The change on Friday is a component of a broader restructure that was revealed following the December 26 Congress Working Committee meeting in Belagavi, Karnataka. The party had said that a complete overhaul of the organisation was in the works. “The year of organisational strengthening for the party on all levels will be 2025,” it had stated.
Election losses for the Congress have occurred in Delhi, Haryana, and Maharashtra since the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
