By IANS,
New Delhi : The Congress will benefit in election-bound Bihar with a new state unit chief as the appointment will help to end factionalism, a party leader said Thursday.
“The formation of the new team is a welcome move. I feel it will bring a positive change though not much time is left for the assembly elections. It will help end factionalism,” Shakeel Ahmed, a former chief of the state unit himself, told IANS.
The Congress Wednesday named All India Congress Committee (AICC) secretary Mehboob Ali Kaiser as the new state party chief in place of Anil Kumar Sharma and Mukul Wasnik as general secretary in charge of the state in place of Jagdish Tytler.
Ahmed, who is also an AICC spokesperson, said the new state party president was “a non-controversial face” and the new general secretary had a lot of experience.
He said the new appointments will also strengthen the party organisation.
Assembly elections are due in Bihar by October this year but the Congress has not been able to put its house in order due to factionalism in the state.
Several senior state leaders had been demanding replacement of Sharma as the state party chief. Congress sources said the central leadership had also got feedback about differences between Sharma and Tytler.
Party leaders from Bihar said that Kaiser, a party legislator and a former state minister, had his task cut out as only about five months were left for the assembly polls.
“He will need to reach out to as large a section of people as possible. Since the impending monsoons will pose a constraint in movement, the new leadership will have to quickly evolve its plan of action,” a party leader said.
He said that the Congress, fighting the assembly polls on its own and not with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), was up against leaders of the stature of Janata Dal-United’s Nitish Kumar and RJD chief Lalu Prasad and was not likely to be seen as a serious contender for power.
“The party will do well to emerge as a balancing force which is in a position to influence formation of a government,” the leader said.