Under Jairam, will Cong’s ‘connect’ improve?

New Delhi: The Congress party has replaced Randeep Surjewala with Jairam Ramesh as the incharge of the communication department. He is in charge of media, social media and all communication. There was talk earlier that Randeep Surjewala is in charge of Karnataka, where elections are due next year, so the communication department could be taken over from him.

Now the question is, will Jairam Ramesh retain or change the old team of Communications Department? There is speculation about AICC secretary and co-in-charge of communication department Pranav Jha, social media in-charge Rohan Gupta and media department’s Vineet Punia. After Ramesh became the head of the communication department, there is a general perception that the number of people working in Hindi will be less and their importance will also decrease.

In Randeep Surjewala’s team, the number of people who spoke, understood and worked in Hindi were more. Most of the people were from Hindi belt, but this situation will not remain with Ramesh. He is from Karnataka and has a team working with him in English. Secondly, they are leaders living in their ‘intellectual ego’, so they do not give preference to too many people. Thirdly, Ramesh is not too active on social media. By the time he was appointed the head of the communications department, he had 1.5 lakh followers on Twitter and he used to follow only 18 people. In contrast, Surjewala had more than 17 lakh followers. That’s why many Congress leaders are believing that Jairam Ramesh himself and the entire team will have to work harder and at the same time give preference to English speaking along with Hindi speaking individuals. This is also necessary because almost the entire media team of BJP is going to work in Hindi only.