Bhubaneswar, Aug 23: The All India Congress Committee (AICC) on Friday inducted as many as seven senior Congress leaders to the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee’s (OPCC) Steering Committee as permanent invitees.
The AICC’s Odisha In-charge Ajoy Kumar informed it through a press release, issued today.
The release read, the peremanent invitees incude former PCC President Sarat Pattanayak, Niranjan Patnaik, Prasad Harichandan with Narasingha Mishra, Rama Chandra Khuntia, Sarat Raut and Santosh Singh Saluja
Earlier, the AICC had dissolved the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) led by Sarat Pattanayak.
A few days after dissolving the OPCC, the AICC in a bid to reorient the Congress Party in the state on Wednesday formed a 14-member Steering Committee for Odisha headed by AICC in-charge for Odisha Ajoy Kumar while AICC secretary Mohd Shahnawaz Choudhary has been named the convenor of the panel.
An AICC press release issued by the Party General Secretary K C Venugopal read, the Congress President has approved the proposal for the constitution of a Steering Committee for Odisha with immediate effect.
The panel includes senior leader and former Union Minister Srikant Jena, former MP Ramachandra Khuntia, former OPCC president Jaydev Jena, Koraput MP Saptagiri Ulaka, Ashok Das, former Union Minister Bhakta Charan Das, former MP Ananta Prasad Sethi, former MLA Mohd Moquim, Debasish Patnaik, Biswaranjan Mohanty, Balabhadra Majhi and Sasmita Behera.
Worth mentioning, the AICC on July 21 dissolved the OPCC headed by Sarat Pattanayak for discouraging performance in the general election, with winning 14 Assembly Constituencies and only one Lok Sabha seat in Odisha.