By Arun Pratap Singh
Dehradun, 22 Feb: Congress leaders invited to the AICC session in Raipur (Chhattisgarh) today left from Jolly Grant Airport. They will be participating in the Plenary Session of the Congress party being held at Raipur. It may be recalled that many senior Congress leaders have openly criticised the party leadership in general and the Congress leader in charge of the party affairs in Uttarakhand, Devendra Yadav, of deliberately ignoring the claims of many senior and deserving party leaders to be the part of the AICC session. Former PCC Chief and former Leader of the Opposition was the first such senior leader to openly criticise the leader in charge of party affairs in Uttarakhand for ignoring the claims of senior and deserving leaders. Three-time MLA from Nanakmatta, Gopal Singh Rana also followed suit, and then former MLA Vijay Pal Sajwan was another senior leader to do. Sajwan stressed that no one from the entire Uttarkashi district had been invited to the Plenary session of AICC. In all, 43 Congress leaders from Uttarakhand have been invited as AICC members.
Chakrata MLA Pritam Singh has in fact gone to the extent of accusing Yadav of taking decisions like Muhammad Bin Tughlaq and has stated that his impractical and biased decisions might adversely affect the results of the upcoming Municipal and Lok Sabha elections in the state.
Although the leaders did not openly point this out, privately they reminded that claims of all the leaders considered close to Pritam Singh have been deliberately ignored by the party leadership while inviting party leaders to the AICC session. It is an open secret that, ever since the state assembly elections, Pritam Singh, and the leader in charge of the party affairs, Devendra Yadav, have been at loggerheads with each other. However, despite a huge loss for the party in the assembly elections held, last year, Yadav, who had faced a lot of criticism over distribution of tickets and his election management, continues to be the leader in charge of the party affairs in Uttarakhand. At the same time, PCC has seen major changes. In the past one and a half years, the baton of PCC has passed through several hands.
It may be recalled that, in all, 43 Congress leaders have been made the AICC members from Uttarakhand. A list of members from Uttarakhand was released by AICC on Monday. The list contained 30 ‘elected’ and 13 ‘nominated’ members. ‘Elected’ members included PCC Chief Karan Mahra, Leader of the Opposition Yashpal Arya, former Chief Minister Harish Rawat, former Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh, former State President Ganesh Godiyal, Qazi Nizamuddin, Pradeep Tamta, Prakash Joshi, Manoj Tiwari and Harish Dhami. It may be pertinent to point out that, with the exception of Priam Singh, most of the names are considered to be from the Harish Rawat camp.
Meanwhile, General Secretary, Organisation, Vijay Saraswat said that the three-day plenary session of the Congress party has been convened by the All India Congress Committee from 24 to 26 February at Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh Nagar in Raipur(Chhattisgarh). AICC has issued instructions to all AICC and PCC members, District and Metropolitan Congress Committee presidents to participate in the plenary session of the party.
State Vice President, Organisation, Mathuradatt Joshi, State General Secretary, Organisation, Vijay Saraswat, General Secretary Yakub Siddiqui, Shanti Prasad Bhatt, Narendra Rana, Navneet Sati, Ishita Seedha, Neeraj Tyagi, Girish Papanai were among the Congress leaders who left for Raipur today from Jolly Grant Airport.
On behalf of the State Congress Committee, State Vice President Mathuradatt Joshi, State General Secretary Vijay Saraswat and State General Secretary Yakub Siddiqui have been entrusted with the responsibility as coordinators, who will meet all Congress leaders going from Uttarakhand Pradesh to participate in the session.
