Congress brings more changes in leadership of its state units

The Congress appointed Avinash Pande as its general secretary incharge of Rajasthan and named Sunil Jakhar and Pritam Singh as the party chiefs of Punjab and Uttarakhand, respectively.

Making another set of structural alterations after its drubbing in the recent assembly elections, the Congress leadership also appointed Vivek Tankha — a Rajya Sabha MP from Madhya Pradesh — as the head of the party’s legal department.

Pande (58) replaces Gurudas Kamat, who had requested the Congress high command to relieve him of all organisational responsibilities following differences with Mumbai unit chief Sanjay Nirupam and Maharashtra’s party general secretary in-charge Mohan Prakash over their functioning.

A former Rajya Sabha member from Maharashtra, Pande has been a party secretary for nearly a decade now. He will be assisted in Rajasthan by a fourmember team of secretaries, comprising Vivek Bansal, Qazi Mohammad Nizamuddin, Devendra Yadav and Tarun Kumar.

The Congress has tried to balance caste equations in both Punjab and Uttarakhand, where assembly elections were held in February-march. While 63-yearold Jakhar is the Hindu face of the party in Punjab, CM Captain Amarinder Singh is a Jat Sikh.

The Election Commission (EC) will hold an “open challenge” to hack its electronic voting machines (EVMS) after consultations at an all-party meeting of recognised national and regional parties on May 12, sources said on Thursday.

The Opposition parties have rallied together to demand an audit of EVMS, alleging that the devices can be easily manipulated.

Several opposition parties have raised concerns over the efficiency of EVMS following the recent assembly elections in five states and demanded the commission revert to paper ballots.

Representatives of all recognised national and regional parties will be allowed to take part in the open challenge.

Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was the first one to complain against the EVMS and alleged that large-scale tampering of EVMS aided the BJP in its sweeping victory in Uttar Pradesh in March Kejriwal, the Samajwadi Party, as well as the Congress, had echoed those allegations.

The row over EVMS was back in the headlines after allegations in Madhya Pradesh, ahead of a bypoll in April, that a device registered votes only for the saffron party during a media demonstration.

The allegations have been vehemently denied by the EC.

During the hacking challenge, the commission will explain how the voting machines are tamperproof and secured under administrative and technical safeguards just as it has in the past