Congress leader Kamal Nath (Files)
Ending months of suspense, the Congress on Thursday finally appointed veteran leader Kamal Nath as president of its Madhya Pradesh unit and handed over the reins of the campaign to the young Jyotiraditya Scindia. The party also named four working presidents – Tribal leader Bala Bacchan, senior legislator Ramnivas Rawat, Indore MLA Jitu Patwari and leader Surendra Chaudhary.
Assembly elections are due in Madhya Pradesh at the end of this year and the Congress high command had been unable to finalise the reshuffle because of pulls and pressures from various factions.
While appointing Scindia as the campaign panel head and Kamal Nath as the state unit chief, the party has however not signalled whether it would project one of them as the chief ministerial candidate. Scindia, the party chief whip in the Lok Sabha, was keen to become the state unit chief but Nath popped him to the post after former chief minister Digvijaya Singh threw his weight behind Nath.
The Congress also appointed a new president for its Goa unit replacing Shantaram Naik. It appointed former AICC secretary Girish Chodankar as the chief. Chodankar was earlier in charge of the Indian Youth Congress reporting directly to Rahul Gandhi.