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Cong to move EC over Haryana ‘sabotage’

While Azad, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, has been party general secretary incharge of Uttar Pradesh twice before, Nath will look after Haryana apart from Punjab, party General Secretary Janaradan Dwivedi said.

Madhusudan Mistry, who was hitherto looking after Uttar Pradesh, will be the new general secretary incharge of Central Election Committee, while Shakeel Ahmed, incharge of Punjab and Haryana, has been relieved of the charge. Congress president Sonia Gandhi effected the changes a day after the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha which saw cross voting by some party MLAs in Uttar Pradesh and alleged deliberate faulty marking by its 14 legislators in Haryana which led to their votes being declared invalid and resulted in the defeat of Congress-backed candidate R K Anand. There were allegations of internal sabotage at the behest of former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

Azad, 67, is a Gandhi family loyalist and a former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, while 69-year-old Nath is the seniormost MP in the current Lok Sabha having won from his pocket borough of Chhindwara nine times.

The reshuffle came at a time when talk of Rahul Gandhi being elevated as party chief had again gained ground. In UP, Congress had secured just two seats in the last Lok Sabha elections with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi emerging victorious from their traditional seats of Rae Bareli and Amethi.
The Congress is in political wilderness in UP since 1989 following emergence of divisive ‘Mandal-Mandir’ politics and rise of the BSP, which took away its crucial dalit vote base.

In Punjab, Congress is in the opposition for the last nine years and is making a determined bid to capture power from SAD-BJP combine at a time when AAP has also come up as a serious contender. 

Meanwhile, Congress will approach the Election Commission today to protest against the “misuse of 
government machinery” in the Rajya Sabha elections for two seats in Haryana on Saturday.

Cracking the whip, JD(S) on Sunday suspended its eight rebel MLAs who voted against its official candidate and supported Congress in the biennial elections to fill four Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka.Caught off guard by the open defiance of rebels, a red-faced JD(S) leadership also issued a notice asking them why they should not be expelled. 

BJP on Sunday suspended its MLA from Gorakhpur Rural Vijay Bahadur Yadav for cross voting during Rajya Sabha biennial polls. The MLA had cross voted in favour of a Samajwadi Party candidate on Saturday.
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