Cong names new chiefs for Delhi and Karnataka

New Delhi: In key organisational changes, the Congress on Wednesday appointed young leader Anil Chaudhary as its Delhi unit chief and D.K. Shivakumar, known to be the party’s chief troubleshooter, as the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president. Subhash Chopra had resigned as the Delhi Congress chief in February.

In an apparent firefighting exercise amid the Madhya Pradesh crisis, the Congress on Wednesday appointed new party chiefs in Karnataka and New Delhi.

The party on Wednesday appointed former legislator Anil Chaudhary as the party’s Delhi unit president. Former Delhi Assembly Speaker Subhash Chopra had resigned from the post in February, taking moral responsibility for the party’s debacle in the Assembly polls.

The Delhi unit of the Congress has been facing crisis ever since former chief minister late Sheila Dikshit lost the Assembly elections in 2013, that too after remaining in power for 15 consecutive years. Under Mrs Dikshit’s leadership, the party was able to win just eight of the 70 Assembly seats. But the party could not secure even a single seat under the leadership of former city minister Arvinder Singh Lovely in 2015 polls, in which AAP secured a historic mandate by winning 67 seats.

The Congress, however, got a breather in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in which it secured second position in all the seven seats in Delhi, which were won by BJP by huge margins. The AAP was reduced to the third slot in the Parliamentary polls.

But the Congress got another jolt in the 2020 Assembly polls, in which it again failed to secure even a single seat and its vote share further went down from 9.7 per cent in 2015 to 4.27 per cent.

Now, the party has handed over the baton of its Delhi unit to Mr Chaudhary, who is in his 40s, and has also served as the municipal councillor.

He was also the head of the Delhi Youth Congress and Delhi NSUI. At present, Mr Chaudhary is the All India Congress Committee secretary incharge of the party’s Odisha unit.

Besides Mr Chaudhary, the Congress has also appointed Abhisheikh Dutt, Jaikishan, Mudit Aggarwal, Ali Hasasan and Shivani Chopra as the vice president of the party’s city unit. While Ms Chopra, who recently lost elections from the Kalkaji Assembly constituency, is the daughter of Mr Subhash Chopra, Mr Aggarwal is the son of the party’s former city unit head J P Aggarwal, who was also the Lok Sabha member. Mr Hasan’s father is a former city legislator.

The only two experienced hands chosen for the posts of the vice president are Mr Jaikishan, who has won the Sultanpur Majra Assembly seat on four occasions and Mr Dutt, who is the party’s leader in the South Delhi Municipal Corporation.

Meanwhile, after several weeks of indecision, the AICC on Wednesday named senior Congress leader D.K. Shivakumar as president of Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC). The quick decision, after weeks of inaction on the Karnataka front, followed dramatic turn of events in Madhya Pradesh which saw the exit of Jyotiraditya Schindia, an aspirant for Madhya Pradesh Congress chief's post.

The AICC has attempted to balance all factions in Karnataka by naming three working presidents, as suggested by a senior state leader.