Kohil, Anugrah AICC in-charge of Bihar & U'khand

Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday made senior Congress leader from Gujarat Shaktisinh Kohil AICC in-charge of Bihar, and former Uttar Pradesh MLA Anugrah Narayan Singh AICC in-charge of Uttarakhand, as part of the ongoing changes in the party leadership.

While Kohil succeeds CP Joshi, party in-charge of Bihar, Singh takes over from Ambika Soni who had been requesting her workload be reduced. These are the first organizational assignments for both of them and they fit into the middle rung at the party leadership as “AICC in-charge of states”, a slot below AICC general secretaries and a notch above the attached AICC secretaries

Both Joshi and Soni continue as AICC general secretaries with the former still having over half a dozen states under his charge, while the latter is in charge of J&K. Yet the removal of Joshi from Bihar, known to be among the ‘handpicked guides’ of Gandhi, is significant as the Gandhi-Joshi were the architects of three boomeranged acts; propped up Nitish Kumar as the face of the now defunct mahagadbandhan only to see him realigning with the BJP. The duo had also backed PCC chief-turned-party deserter Ashok Chowdhary despite in-house rebellion against him.


Kohil, who is a senor Congress leader from Gujarat and a close associate of Ahmed Patel, is a vocal critic of PM Modi and BJP. An AICC spokesperson, Kohil lost the last Assembly polls. Singh had represented Allahabad west Assembly constituency in the UP Assembly three times before he lost in the 2017 elections. Both belong to the Kshtriya/Thakur communities respectively, and are in their ’50s and ’60s.