Himachal Dy CM’s Facebook post leads to speculation of rejig in Cong

A social media post by Deputy Chief Minister Mukesh Agnihotri about the possibility of a ‘conspiracy’ has caused ripples in the political circles of the state and people are expecting a ‘rejig’ in the Congress.

Agnihotri’s Facebook post this afternoon stating that “in this time of conspiracies, the truth will eventually prevail" (Sazeeshon ka daur hai, jhooth ke pavn nahin hote) caused a flutter in the political circles of the state and led to speculation that a major rejig in the Congress was in the offing.

Agnihotri’s post comes on a day when Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, Himachal Pradesh Congress Committee (HPCC) president Pratibha Singh and the Deputy Chief Minister himself met State Congress in-charge Rajni Patil in New Delhi. Public Works Department Minister Vikramaditya Singh had met with AICC general secretary KC Venugopal in New Delhi yesterday.

Though Agnihotri has not named anyone or elucidated the conspiracy, his post has gone viral and people are speculating what he is hinting at. The post is also being linked to the appointment of a new state Congress president though it is not clear whether the party high command will give Pratibha a second term as the state party chief or not.

If a minister is appointed state Congress president, there will be two vacancies in the Cabinet; one berth is vacant since the Congress formed government in December 2022. The name of Rural Development Minister Anirudh Singh has been doing the rounds for the top party post.

All senior Congress leaders, including Pratibha and Agriculture Minister Chander Kumar, have been stressing the need to revamp the party and constitute the state executive, District Congress Committees (DCC) and Block Congress Committees (BCC). On November 6, 2024, the AICC had dissolved the HPCC and all other party organisations and cells in the state.

In fact, Chander Kumar had even gone to the extent of saying that the Congress organisation was lying defunct. Rajya Sabha MP Rajni Patil, who replaced Rajiv Shukla as the state in-charge of Congress affairs in Himachal on February 15 this year, had said on her first visit here that the HPCC would be reconstituted within 15 days but nothing had been even after more than two months.

Himachal Tribune