Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday approved new in-charges for monitoring the party’s Telangana affairs relieving Digvijay Singh as general secretary in-charge of the State.
In a release, Janardhan Dwivedi, AICC organisational secretary, said AICC secretary and former MP R.C. Khuntia was made full-fledged in-charge of Telangana and would be assisted by former Karnataka minister and AICC secretary Satish Jarikholi. Interestingly, Mr. Singh has been relieved of only Telangana charge but not A.P. While State Congress leaders were not forthcoming about the reasons for the sudden change of guard in Telangana, senior functionaries maintained that Mr. Singh had a fairly long stint of four and half a years as in-charge of united AP as also the successor-States post-bifurcation.
A Congress Legislature Party leader said Mr. Singh was relieved of the charge of Telangana, probably because he was planning to undertake Narmada Parikrama padayatra in M.P. “Mr. Singh himself had urged the party leadership to relieve him,” the leader remarked. A top TPCC leader said the party’s central leadership might have decided to revamp the structure by having two separate general secretaries for the two States. The PCC chiefs of Telangana and AP have urged the leadership to appoint separate general secretaries. “The central representatives were at their wits’ end handling critical issues concerning TS and AP as party leaders on both sides voiced different views on common issues. The AICC team had to take a balanced view and react to such situations,” a senior leader said, adding that this could have prompted the party to take a serious view and rectify the anomaly.