Cong MLAs upset with first list of DCC presidents

Raipur, July 01, 2011

A day after the AICC announced the first list of the district Congress committee (DCC) presidents, many of the party legislators on Friday expressed their severe displeasure to the PCC president Nandkumar Patel for ignoring their recommended names for coveted posts. According to information, all the Congress legislators had given the names of their favorite candidates to Patel but the announcement of the first list clearly indicated that national leadership gave preference to the wishlists of Patel, Korba Parliamentarian Charandas Mahant, AICC treasurer Motilal Vora and leader of Congress legislators Ravindra Choubey.

The is the first time that any significant decision for the state unit was taken without considering recommendations of senior leaders like Vidya Charan Shukla, Ajit Jogi and others. Patel started preparing the list of proposed candidates for DCC presidents immediately after his appointment as new state unit head. He held talks with all the senior leaders and MLAs and sought their help in selecting the most appropriate names from all their respective areas.

Still, some of the senior leaders gave names of the candidates from the places other than their own stronghold regions, but during finalisation of the prospects, the party’s general secretary incharge BK Hariprasada truncated the list after consulting with Patel, Vora and Mahant and Choubey.

The MLAs could not believe that the names they sent to Patel for DCC president posts were rejected. Some of these legislators say that they forwarded the names of only those party stalwarts who were capable of handling the post of DCC effectively. Some had even proposed their own names.

However, these legislators reportedly sent three-four names to Patel after the PCC coordination committee announced that the MLAs would not be given place in organisation and new faces would be given opportunity.

Sources informed that Patel, who was making attempts to bridge the gap between the factions, quickly realised that the disgruntled legislators and senior leaders would once again revolt and it would only affect the party’s unity and therefore he was planning to mitigate their anger by making them PCC or AICC delegates or by inducting them in PCC working committee.