Adhir resigns as Bengal Congress president
Kolkata: Bengal Congress President Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury resigned from his post on Monday.
He met AICC in charge Venugopal in Delhi and submitted the resignation to him.
Immediately after the electoral debacle of Congress in Bengal, Chowdhury offered to resign but at that time the Congress leadership told him to wait.
They had told Chowdhury that they would review the situation and get back. But now Congress’s high command has accepted his resignation. Sources close to Congress high command said that now to build up a strong Opposition against the Narendra Modi government, Trinamool Congress is an important political party in the national level political arena. Bengal Congress is not a priority for the Congress high command. Instead, they would prioritise developing strong Opposition forces against the BJP at the Centre.
The high command of the grand old party is not keen on “damaging” relations with the Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool.
Sources indicate that there is speculation about whether senior leader Pradip Bhattacharya will become the state president.
However, the fate of Chowdhury is uncertain after he lost the Lok Sabha elections from Berhampore. There is, however, no report if Chowdhury received any offer from the BJP yet.
Pradip Bhattacharya said that there is a political question as to who would be the next state president of the party and the situation is changing daily.
Adhir had earlier offered his resignation from the post of Pradesh Congress Committee chief.
After a meeting with the state unit of Congress Chowdhury had said: “I am a temporary state Congress president. The full-time president will be elected soon.”
He made this announcement just a day after the Congress’s Rajya Sabha member and former Union Finance minister, P Chidambaram, dropped in at the state secretariat Nabanna and had a 35-minute meeting with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Adhir, a five-time party Lok Sabha MP from Murshidabad’s Berhampur Constituency, was defeated by the Trinamool’s celebrity candidate and former Indian cricketer Yusuf Pathan.
News about Chowdhury’s differences with the party’s high command has been doing the rounds for quite some time over the issue of the party’s relationship with the Trinamool in Bengal.
