UP Congress organisation set for an overhaul, young faces likely

Lucknow: After the brainstorming in the Congress's Chintan Shivir in Udaipur, it is believed that there will be a wide ranging organisational reform in UP as well.

In the country's most populous state, the exercise of appointing a new state president of the party has intensified. At the same time, giving priority to the youth, the party is going to kick off a series of campaigns to expand its vote base by implementing social engineering.

After the election result, UP State Congress Chief Ajay Kumar Lallu stepped down from his post, owning responsibility for electoral drubbing. Till now the new president has not been appointed to this vacant post. There were speculations about many names for the post of State Chief, but now after Chintan Shivir, the names of PL Punia and Pramod Krishnam have emerged as front runners. Of these, PL Punia, who belongs to the Scheduled Castes, has been a former bureaucrat and an acceptable face across all party sections. He has also led several campaigns to connect the Dalits with the party fold. On the other hand, 'spiritual guru' Pramod Krishnam is useful for the party in terms of soft Hindutva equations; although, there are many hurdles for him in terms of cadre's acceptance criteria.

However, according to a highly placed source in the party, along with the approval of the president's name, four working presidents are also set to be appointed. All of them will handle the four zones of UP. Names of Naseemuddin Siddiqui, Nirmal Khatri, Virendra Chaudhary and Nadeem Javed are being considered for these posts.