Exclusion of senior leaders from AICC list likely to intensify factionalism in Odisha Congress further

BHUBANESWAR: Exclusion of some senior Congress leaders from the fresh list of All India Congress Committee (AICC) is likely to intensify factionalism in the state unit of party after its humiliating defeat in the by-poll to the Bijepur assembly constituency.

Names of several senior leaders of the party are missing from the list of AICC members while many junior level functionaries have been included. Though the names of leader of the opposition in the assembly Narasingh Mishra, deputy leader of the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) Chiranjib Biswal, party MLAs
Naba Kishore Das, Krushna Chandra Sagaria, Bhujabal Majhi and Kailesh Kulesika have been made members of the reconstituted AICC, the names of Congress chief whip in the assembly Taraprasad Bahinipati, party MLAs Prafulla Majhi and Jogesh Singh are not there in the list.

Sources said Bahinipati, Majhi and Singh were not taken in because of their open defiance of the party leadership and demand for removal of president of the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC)
Prasad Harichandan following the party's dismal performance in the last year's panchayat polls and defeat in the Bijepur by-poll.

However, several junior leaders including Sidharth Mohanty, Bijay Dwivedy, Sarada Pradhan, Diptirekha Mishra, Janaki Mallick, Arati Deo, Sougat Mohanty and Debasis Bhuyan have reportedly been taken in
as new members of the AICC from the state.

Resentment is brewing among large section of party leaders as the party high command has not taken any step to reconstitute the state unit and removal of Harichandan as OPCC president under whose leadership the Congress had performed miserably in the recent Bijepur byelection.