Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury as new Bengal Congress chief: Nehru-Gandhi loyalists reign supreme

NEW DELHI: Ever since a section of the Congress leaders expressed their reservations over the party leadership last month, the loyalists are getting rewarded one after the other.
In the latest development, Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi appointed senior party leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury as the chief of West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee (WBPCC) on September 9.
Chowdhury is considered a loyalist of the Nehru-Gandhi family. He is already holding the post of leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha.
With the new appointment, Chowdhury would be holding two crucial posts, which is not very common in the Congress party.
The two recent examples of a Congress leader holding dual posts are of Kamal Nath and Sachin Pilot.
Nath was the Madhya Pradesh chief minister as well as the president of the state unit of the Congress. The then Congress general secretary Jyotiraditya Scindia had even complained to the party leadership against Nath holding dual posts. It was one of the reasons why Scindia got disillusioned with the party leadership and quit it to join the BJP. After his government fell in March, Nath remains only the state president.
Similarly, Pilot was the deputy chief minister and the Rajasthan Congress president. After he rebelled along with 18 MLAs in July, he was sacked from both the posts. Although he has called truce with the party leadership, he has not got any responsibility as yet.
In the same way, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury now holds two crucial posts. In fact, he would be the only Congress leader at present to hold one crucial post at the central level and one in the state.
Chowdhury already is the chairperson of the public accounts committee.
He fills the vacancy as WBPCC president created by the death of Somen Mitra on July 30. He has already served as WBPCC president between February 2014 and September 2018.
Chowdhury’s appointment is significant because it comes barely a year before the assembly elections in West Bengal.
The appointment of a Nehru-Gandhi family loyalist in Chowdhury is the third instance after two similar such moves made by the Congress high command.
Before the Congress’s top decision-making body - Congress Working Committee (CWC) - met last on August 24, 23 senior party leaders had written a letter to Sonia Gandhi demanding a “full-time and effective leadership” which is “visible” and “active” in the field.
The signatories to the letter include leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, party MPs and former Union ministers Kapil Sibal, Anand Sharma, Manish Tewari, Shashi Tharoor; Rajya Sabha MP Vivek Tankha; AICC office-bearers and CWC members including Mukul Wasnik and Jitin Prasada; former PCC chiefs Raj Babbar (UP), Arvinder Singh Lovely (Delhi) and Kaul Singh Thakur (Himachal Pradesh); former chief ministers and Union ministers including Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Rajender Kaur Bhattal, M Veerappa Moily, Prithviraj Chavan, PJ Kurian, Renuka Chowdhury, and Milind Deora.
A few days after the CWC meet, Sonia Gandhi made some appointments in the party’s office-bearers in both houses of Parliament, apparently promoting the loyalists.
In the Lok Sabha, Kaliabor MP Gaurav Gogoi from Assam was appointed as the deputy leader of the house while Ludhiana MP Ravneet Singh Bittu from Punjab was made one of the whips.
While Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury is the leader of the Congress in the lower house, K Suresh is the chief whip and Virudhunagar MP Maniackam Tagore from Tamil Nadu is a whip. A committee comprising these five leaders has been constituted to look after floor management.
Similarly another five-member committee was formed in the Rajya Sabha.
Earlier, leader of the opposition the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad and deputy leader of opposition besides chief whip Bhubaneswar Kalita looked after the floor management. After Kalita quit the party last year, the post had been lying vacant.
Jairam Ramesh has been appointed as the new chief whip in the upper house. Congress treasurer Ahmed Patel and general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal have been appointed as two additional members in the committee.
The loyalists are being preferred over the dissenters in the appointments being made after the last CWC meet.