Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury Resigns As West Bengal Congress President (image: facebook.com/sayan.porel.7)
Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee’s chief resigned from his post citing the party’s poor performance in the state during the Lok Sabha elections as the reason.
He, after the meeting of the state unit committee this afternoon conveyed his decision. However, no official confirmation from the Congress leadership regarding his resignation has been given so far. Meanwhile, speculation regarding who the successor will be has already surfaced.
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Mr Chowdhury confirming the report of his resignation stated that since Mallikarjun Kharge became the Congress’s national president, there was no state president. “Now when the full-time President is appointed you will all come to know that,” he said.
The report regarding the difference with the party’s high command has been doing the rounds for quite some time over the party’s relationship with the Trinamool Congress (TMC). His differences with the Congress party chief Mallikarjun Kharge also surfaced during the Lok Sabha polls.
Chowdhury has always been vocal about his views on having an electoral understanding with the CPI(M)-led Left Front. However, his decision came a day after the Congress’s Rajya Sabha member and former Union Finance minister P Chidambaram dropped in at the state secretariat Nabanna and held 35-minute meeting with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
With the High Command yet to confirm the resignation, the Bengal Congress insiders have decided who will be the successor. They have said that the current party Lok Sabha member from Maldaha-Dakshin, Isha Khan Chowdhury, Congress’s lone Lok Sabha MP from Bengal is one of the frontrunners for the post in the party’s Bengal unit.
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Adhir Chowdhury is a five-time party Lok Sabha MP from Murshidabad’s Baharampur constituency. He was defeated by the TMC’s celebrity candidate and former Indian cricketer Yusuf Pathan.
