Congress releases list of 71 district presidents in MP; OBC leaders given maximum representation

Bhopal: The Congress on Saturday released a list 71 district presidents in Madhya Pradesh, with a sizable 20-odd being those from the OBC category, followed by Dalits and tribals.

Senior party leader Digvijaya Singh's MLA son and former state minister Jaivardhan Singh has been made Guna district president, a Congress leader said.

Other Backward Classes account for around 49 per cent of MP's population. The ruling BJP, incidentally, has had OBC chief ministers in the state since 2003, including Uma Bharti, Babulal Gaur, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and incumbent Mohan Yadav.

The Congress' list has four women. These are Vijaylaxmi Tanwar, who has been made Agar Malwa district president, Pratibha Raghuvanshi in Khandwa city, Sunita Patel in Narsinghpur and Saraswati Singh Markam in Singrauli.

A Congress leader said Omkar Singh Markam has been appointed Dindori district president, Priyavrat Singh has been given the post in Rajgarh and Harshvijay Gehlot has been made as Ratlam rural chief. They are all former state ministers.

In Bhopal, Praveen Saxena and Anokhi Man Singh Patel were retained as city and rural presidents, respectively.

Eleven former legislators have been made district presidents. From the minority community, Arif Iqbal Siddiqui replaced Maqsood Ahmed in Satna as city chief.

In all the party has retained 18 district presidents, including Nanesh Choudhary (Barwani), Ravi Naik (Khargone), Prakash Ranka (Jhabua), Nareshwar Pratap Singh (Shajapur), Mukesh Bhati (Ujjain city), Mohit Raghuvanshi (Vidisha), and Rajeev Gujarati (Sehore).

In Burhanpur, Congress leader Hemant Patil resigned from all party posts after being denied the rural district president's position. He was the district Congress spokesperson as well.

"I will remain a worker," he told PTI. His is the first resignation following the announcement of the list.

There are leaders from the SC/ST categories as well as two Muslims, two Jains, one Sikh in the list, another Congress leader added.

"The list has come in line with the vision of Rahul Gandhi who wants participation of all communities, especially OBCs, SCs and STs. Gandhi has been advocating caste-based census to end economic and social disparity," he said.

The list released by AICC general secretary K C Venugopal has come two months after Gandhi kicked off his party's 'Sangathan Srijan Abhiyan' (organisation rejuvenation campaign) in Madhya Pradesh.

On June 3, Gandhi held back-to-back meetings here with party functionaries as part of preparations for the 2028 MP assembly polls.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP swept all 29 seats in MP, including Chhindwara, the home turf of senior leader and former chief minister Kamal Nath.

The Congress has been out of power in MP since 2003, except for a brief 15-month period between December 2018 and March 2020 under Nath.

The Nath government collapsed after several MLAs, most of them loyal to Jyotiraditya Scindia, quit and joined the BJP. The BJP retained power with a huge majority in the 2023 assembly polls.