MPs take charge of Rahul tour team,displace ‘inactive’ ministers

Sources in the party said the re-shuffle in the core-committees for 10 zones would serve two purposes – relieve Union Ministers from additional burden and give importance to the Members of Parliament,who always complain of being “neglected”.

Earlier,five Union Ministers were given charge of two zones each but now,each of these ministers has now been relieved of one zone,which has been given to other senior party leaders.

Among the changes,one of the most noticed one is the inclusion of Congress MP from Sultanpur Sanjay Singh as co-incharge of zone-6 headed by Union Minister Beni Prasad Verma. While party men close to Singh had been complaining about him being neglected,he was recently in the limelight for opposing FDI publicly. Though,those close to him still have doubts over the kind of the authority he would have with Beni being incharge of the zone,where he has stronghold and also with MLC Naseeb Pathan being another co-incharge in the same zone.

After the re-shuffle,PL Punia would be incharge of Zone-1 covering Saharanpur,Muzaffarnagar,Meerut GB Nagar etc with MP Azaharuddin as co-incharge. Rajeev Shukla would be incharge of zone-2 covering Agra,Mathura,Aligarh,Etah,Mainpuri,etc. with MP Kamal Kishore and MLA Pradeep Mathur as co-incharge. Union Minister Jitin Prasad would be incharge of Zone-3 covering Bareilly,Rampur,Moradabad and Badaun with Begum Noorbano as co-charge person.

Zone-4 covering Shahjahanpur,Pilibhit,Lakhimpur,Sitapur and Farrukhabad would be headed by Union Minister Salman Khursheed with MP Praveen Singh Aron as co-incharge. Zone-5 covering Rae Bareli,Unnao,Lucknow,Barabanki and Amethi would be headed by Union Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal with MP Annu Tandon as co-incharge. Zone-7 covering Kushinagar,Mahrajganj and Gorakhour has been given to Union Minister RPN Singh with MP Harshawardhan as co-incharge. Other incharge persons include Jagdambika Pal,Nirmal Khatri and Pradeep Jain with Zafar Ali Naqvi,Vinay Pandey,RajKumari Ratna Singh and Raja Ram Pal as co-incharge persons.