Factionalism comes to fore in Cong’s first state-level meeting

MANDI:Congress party factionalism came to fore in the first state-level party meeting after the state assembly elections at Mandi on Saturday. Himachal Pradesh Congress Committee (HPCC) state president Sukhvinder Singh, member of state assembly Mukesh Agnihotri and former transport minister GS Bali were present and addressed the party workers.

Rajender Rana, who defeated former chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal in recent state assembly elections and turned the whole scenario of the Bharatiya Janta Party dynasty politics in favour of Jai Ram Thakur was the focus of the meeting.

Prominent leaders such as former chief minister Virbhadra Singh, former ministers Vidya Stokes, Sudhir Sharma, Asha Kumari and first time MLA of outer Shimla constituency and son of Virbhadra Singh, Vikramaditya were not present in the meeting. The said meeting was the first state-level meeting to discuss party strategy to prepare for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Congress party state political affairs in-charge Ranjeet Ranjan presided over the meeting, where former Maharashtra chief minister and former Union minister Sushil Kumar Shinde cancelled his programme to attend the meeting at the eleventh hour, according to the sources.

However, state chief spokesperson and media head Naresh Chauhan, clarified that the top leaders have not ‘avoided’ the meeting but could not attend the meeting due to personal reasons.

Former transport minister GS Bali fired at the party top leaders for their failure in uniting party men and said that advises and grievances of the party leaders should be heard but unfortunately it did not happen in the last so many years and party paid the cost of this ‘high headedness’ by losing assembly elections.

Congress party leader mostly targeted BJP led centre government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s failure in keeping promises which the BJP and Modi committed during previous Lok Sabha elections.

Few leaders also targeted chief minister Jai Ram Thakur over his failure in solving ongoing agitation against shifting of sub divisional magistrate’s office in his home assembly constituency Seraj.