Bhubaneswar: Eying for 2024 Lok Sabha and Assembly Polls, the Congress party has given crucial responsibilities to recently joined bureaucrat turned politician Bijay Patnaik.
Congress President Malllikarjun Kharge has appointed Shri Patnaik as the Campaign Committee Chairman of Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) with immediate effect.
The party has also appointed Shri Patnaik as member of a newly-formed 27-member Political Affairs Committee. The panel has Congress General Secretary Odisha In-Charge A Chella Kumar and Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee President Sarat Pattanayak, Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Narasingha Mishra among other senior leaders, are part of the panel.
Senior leaders of the party have been given place in this Political Affaris Committee. Similarly, all AICC Secretaries from the State and Chiefs of the State women, youth and student wings and Seva Dal are special invitees in the Political Affairs Committee.
The appointment of Shri Patnaik, a former Odisha Chief Secretary who had joined Congress in February this year, is significant as it comes ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections.
The Congress party, which slipped to third position in Odisha, eying to utilise Shri Patnaik’s administrative experience to bolster its organization as it struggles to bounce back amid eroding electoral fortunes ever since the BJD was formed in 1997.
From Odisha’s main ruling party till 1999, it remained the principal opposition for around two decades till 2019 when the BJP pushed it to a distant third position.