By IANS
New Delhi : Congress president Sonia Gandhi Wednesday appointed three central ministers as chiefs of the party units in West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir amid reports that the ruling party prefers early general elections.
Information and Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi has been named president of the West Bengal Congress unit, while Water Resource Minister Saifuddin Soz will take charge of the party affairs in Jammu and Kashmir.
Minister of State for Personnel Suresh Pachauri will be the new president of the party in election-bound Madhya Pradesh.
The appointments have also intensified rumours about a possible cabinet reshuffle.
Dasmunsi’s appointment in West Bengal, where Pradip Bhattacharya was working president after External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee quit the post, is seen as significant political move. Unlike Mukherjee, who maintains good rapport with leaders of the state’s ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), Dasmunsi is known for his anti-Communists stance.
Mukherjee had resigned as state unit president after the Congress faced a debacle in 2006 assembly elections.
Dasmunsi, who had irked CPI-M leaders with his public utterances against the party during violence in Singur and Nandigram last year, has been favouring a Trinamool Congress-led alliance against the Left Front in the state.
The CPI-M, which along with three other Left parties support Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government from outside, had been severely criticised for its stance on bloody violence in Singur and Nandigram where farmers had protested land acquisition for industrial projects.
The village council elections are due in West Bengal this year. Dasmunsi had been the state unit president between 1985 and 1988.
Pachauri, who will replace former deputy chief minister Subhash Yadav, has been sent to Madhya Pradesh for leading the party in the assembly election, due later this year. Pachauri has recently become one of the close associates of Gandhi and her family.
Both Dasmunsi and Pachauri, who were also in charge of parliamentary affairs, may have to shed one of the responsibilities.
Ajay Singh, son of Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh, has been made in-charge of the campaign committee in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled Madhya Pradesh.
Soz will succeed senior Congress leader Peerzada Muhammed Hussain, who recently quit as state education minister and state Congress committee president after he was accused of demanding and accepting a bribe of Rs.40,000 from independent legislator Shoaib Lone.