With Kharge at helm, state Congress now awaits pending organisational changes

According to sources in the Rajasthan Congress, party leaders in the state are keeping a close watch on the decision that Congress takes on the general secretary in-charge for the state.

Senior Congress leader Ajay Maken, the incumbent AICC general secretary in-charge of Rajasthan, has drawn the ire of loyalists of Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot during the recent political crisis in the state.

Gehlot supporter and parliamentary affairs minister Shanti Dhariwal, who had organised a parallel meeting of MLAs at his house before the official CLP meeting, even went on to accuse Maken of being partial towards Congress leader Sachin Pilot.

Pilot was reportedly the choice of the Congress high command for the chief minister’s post when Gehlot’s name was doing rounds as the frontrunner for the party president’s position and Gehlot loyalist MLAs had stalled the decision on the chief minister by tendering their resignations.

“Despite the public attacks on Maken by the Gehlot camp, he has so far maintained silence over the issue after his initial reaction after the CLP meeting fiasco, when he had described MLAs skipping the CLP meeting as an act of indiscipline. It is yet to be seen if Kharge decides to continue with Maken as the state’s in-charge or makes a change and prefers to go with a new face,” said a senior Congress leader from the state.

Maken was appointed the general secretary in-charge of Rajasthan during the 2020 political crisis, and had replaced Avinash Pande, who held the post before him.

Two leaders from Rajasthan, both former ministers, Raghu Sharma and Harish Choudhary, are also presently in-charge of Gujarat — which goes to the polls later this year — and Punjab, respectively.

The duo, along with Congress leaders Jitendra Singh and Raghubeer Meena, have also been included in the steering committee constituted by Kharge.

According to Congress sources, with little over a year left for next year’s Assembly elections in Rajasthan, the party’s cadre is also waiting to see the long-pending announcements of the names of block Congress committee presidents in 400 blocks and district Congress committee presidents in more than 20 districts.

After all district and block committees of the Congress were dissolved in 2020 during the political crisis, last year, the names of 13 Congress district presidents were announced. However, the majority of the districts continue to function without a district president.

Party sources say while the elections for the posts of the district and block presidents have already been completed, the names are yet to be announced.

“Now that Kharge sahab has been elected as the Congress president, the pending results of block and district president elections will be declared in due course of time. We will go to the Assembly elections with a strong organisational setup,” said state Congress spokesperson Swarnim Chaturvedi.