Team Rahul gets cracking in Karnataka, Rajasthan

Congress is all set to launch massive five-day team building exercise in poll-bound Karnataka and Rajasthan to forge unity among the leaders and the cadre ahead of the elections next year.
 
Newly-appointed AICC General Secretaries K C Venugopal and Avinash Pande will chair the meetings in Bengaluru and Jaipur respectively beginning Monday when leaders from each district would interact with the leadership and thrash out differences.
 
In Karnataka, the five-day session would be followed by a reshuffle in the state unit of the Congress and also of the Council of Ministers, if necessary. The party has already made it clear that it would contest the elections next year under the leadership of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. Besides leaders from district, functionaries of the party's state unit, ministers, MLAs, MPs, former legislators have been asked to be present for the meeting.
 
At a coordination committee meeting in Bengaluru last week, several leaders had complained about the non-availibility of district in-charge ministers to address the grievances of the voters and party cadre.
 
Venugopal had already hinted at changes in the state unit and announced that a new PCC chief would be appointed this month itself. The names of D K Shivakumar, M B Patil, S R Patil are doing the rounds as successor to incumbent G Parmeshwara.
 
In Rajasthan, Pandey's task would be to unite the factions led by AICC General Secretaries Ashok Gehlot and C P Joshi who are proving to be a bugbear for state unit chief Sachin Pilot.
 
Pandey has called a meeting of all the leaders in the state from Monday onwards to get feedback from them on reviving the party in the state where Congress could not win a single seat in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.