Bhubaneswar: With the senior Congress leaders of Odisha scheduled to meet the party high command Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi on Thursday, the change of guard in the Odisha Congress seems imminent, sources in the political circles said.
As per the schedule, some senior party leaders of the state including Niranjan Patnaik, Bhakta Charan Das, Pradip Majhi, Chiranjib Biswal, Naba Kishore Das and Srikant Jena are likely to meet Rahul Gandhi later in the day.
However, who among these leaders will meet the party supremo is not yet known.
As per the schedule, prior to the meeting with Rahul Gandhi, the aforesaid leaders will have a meeting with the newly appointed Odisha in-charge Jitendra Singh, three newly appointed AICC secretaries for Odisha—Rudra Raju, Anil Kumar Chaudhary and Sheikh Mastan Vali— as well as Aditya Sharma, who has also been appointed as AICC Joint secretary for Odisha.
Meanwhile, leader of the Opposition Narasingh Mishra left for New Delhi on Wednesday night after getting a last minute call from the AICC office.
Sources said issues on change in PCC leadership and restructuring would be discussed at the meeting.
It is worthwhile here to mention that the Congress high command on September 5 last year had called on 36 senior Odisha leaders and given them the hint on the change in PCC leadership.
However, the newly appointed Odisha in-charge has told the media that nothing can be said at the moment about the change in PCC leadership.
Reliable sources said that the party supremo might appoint Chiranjib Biswal, Naba Das and Pradip Majhi as the PCC working president and allow the Prasad Harichadan to remain as the PCC president.
“What should be our roadmap, how we are going to contest the polls and how to empower our party workers all these would be discussed threadbare during the meeting between the state leaders and the party supremo,” Singh said.
