Congress Appoints Ajay Rai as UP Chief, Randeep Surjewala in Charge of MP

New Delhi: The Congress on Thursday evening swung into action and removed the general secretary incharges of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat — J.P. Agarwal and Raghu Sharma, respectively. Mukul Wasnik has been given the charge of Gujarat, while Randeep Singh Surjewala has been given the additional charge of the poll bound state of MP. This comes as the BJP announced its first list of candidates for the Assembly elections in MP and Chhattisgarh.

Surjewala, who is in-charge of Karnataka, was recently appointed as a senior election observer by the party in Madhya Pradesh.

In Uttar Pradesh, the state president Brijlal Khabri has been replaced by Varanasi leader Ajay Rai, who had contested against Narendra Modi in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Varanasi.

Insiders claim that J.P. Agarwal and the Madhya Pradesh unit chief and former chief minister Kamal Nath were not getting along; hence a new general secretary was required in the poll-bound state. Meanwhile, Raghu Sharma who is a MLA from Rajasthan, was required to go back to his state and nurse his constituency in Rajasthan, where Assembly elections are due towards year-end.

An organisational overhaul of several state units of the Congress is underway, and more appointments are likely to be made in the coming days.
Earlier this month, the Congress set up screening committees to finalise candidates for the Assembly polls in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana later this year.

The setting up of the screening committees followed the appointment of election observers for Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram.

The Congress is seeking to wrest control from the BJP in Madhya Pradesh. The party is holding poll strategy meetings for every state in order to prepare for next year’s Lok Sabha elections.