Lucknow. The Congress high command has tried to take advantage of the weakening hold of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on the Dalit vote bank in the state by nominating former MP Brijlal Khabri, who belongs to the Dalit community, as the president of the party’s Uttar Pradesh unit. .
According to a release issued by the Uttar Pradesh Congress, Congress President Sonia Gandhi has appointed six regional presidents of the state Congress unit in addition to Khabri. According to the appointment letter issued by Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal, apart from making Khabri the state president, senior party leaders Naseemuddin Siddiqui, Nakul Dubey, Ajay Rai, Virendra Chaudhary, Anil Yadav (Etawah) and Yogesh Dixit have been appointed as the state president. The provincial presidents of various zones have been nominated.
It is clear that among the six provincial presidents, Siddiqui and Dubey are also former BSP leaders. Dubey had left the BSP and joined the Congress in the last assembly elections. At present, Siddiqui is the media in-charge of the Pradesh Congress.
It is noteworthy that the then state president Ajay Singh ‘Lallu’ had resigned from the post, taking responsibility for the defeat of the Congress in the assembly elections held in Uttar Pradesh in March last. Since then the post of state president was vacant. The newly appointed state president Khabri had left the BSP and joined the Congress in 2016.
He has been an MP from Jalaun Garautha parliamentary constituency on a BSP ticket. The BSP once made him a member of the Rajya Sabha as well. After this, he definitely contested the Lok Sabha elections from this seat on a Congress ticket but could not register a victory. In the last assembly elections also, Congress had fielded Khabri from Mehrauni in Lalitpur district and his wife Urmila Sonkar Khabri from Orai reserved seat in Jalaun district, but both had to face defeat.
