New Delhi: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Thursday announced key changes in the AICC ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and four States Assembly elections in 2023. As per the official order, Mukul Wasnik replaced Raghu Sharma as AICC in-charge of Gujarat, Randeep Surjewala replaced JP Agarwal as in-charge of poll-bound Madhya Pradesh.
In Uttar Pradesh, which is under the charge of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Ajai Rai replaced Brij Lal Khabri as the state unit chief. According to party insiders, the appointment of Surjewala shows that the high command trusts him after his good show in Karnataka where he was in-charge and managed the state polls well.
Surjewala, who is AICC in-charge of Karnataka, gets the additional charge of Madhya Pradesh, a key state where the party senses opportunity this time under the leadership of PCC chief Kamal Nath, but also wanted a more active and aggressive person to coordinate the state affairs as AICC in-charge.
Kharge was directly supervising the work of Surjewala over the past months and was impressed the way he handled the two top state leaders K Siddaramaiah and DK Shiv Kumar. Though there is no leadership issue in Madhya Pradesh, where another veteran Digvijay Singh is fully backing Kamal Nath, the state needs a good manager to advise Kharge on state affairs.
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Though the outgoing MP in-charge Agarwal is a veteran, he lacked the aggression needed for the state polls and was also more interested in Delhi politics. Of late, the BJP, too, has become aggressive in MP where the ruling party recently registered several FIRs against Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and other senior leaders.
In Gujarat, the home state of PM Modi and HM Amit Shah, the grand old party had performed poorly in the last year’s Assembly polls, but is now trying to regroup under a new state unit chief Shakti Sinh Gohil, who replaced Jagdish Thakor. Wasnik is a trusted old hand of former party chief Sonia Gandhi and works closely with Kharge as in-charge of the party’s Central Election Committee.
The outgoing in-charge Raghu Sharma is an MLA in Rajasthan and has been busy with the Assembly polls that will take place later this year. As a result, Sharma was not able to devote full time to Gujarat, which is a challenge for the grand old party. Sharma incidentally had submitted his resignation soon after the last year’s Assembly polls, but his replacement had been pending with Kharge, who took charge in October 2022.
Wasnik will now have to work with Gohil to ensure that the party wins an impressive number of seats in the Gujarat 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The BJP won all 26 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2019. Priyanka had appointed Brij Lal Khabri as the Uttar Pradesh unit chief last year with the hope that he would be able to revive the party in the state. Though Khabri had been doing well, the party had been feeling the need for a more aggressive person to head the UP team given the BJP’s majority there and the fact that it sends the largest number of MPs 80 to the Lok Sabha. Rai had contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections against PM nominee Narendra Modi from Varanasi. He has been a former MLA from Pindra in Varanasi and had been serving as one of the zonal in charges under Brij Lal over the past months.
