Young Turks replace several old faces as DCC president

Nishikant Khajuria
JAMMU, Oct 18:  In a bid to revamp the party ahead of forthcoming Assembly elections, State Congress has removed its several district presidents who had grown old or become ineffective, with young Turks.
Om Chopra, Bhupender Singh Pathania, Babu Ram Sharma and Abdul Gani Khan are among the veteran Congress leaders, who have been removed as District president for their old age while a few others have been shifted for their incompetence, sources in Congress circles told the Excelsior.
Total nine district president have been changed and replaced with comparably young faces, who were already accommodated in the Pradesh Congress Committee, announced a few months ago.
Besides new District presidents, the party has also appointed several working presidents for accommodating more people and better functioning of the District Congress Committees, sources added.
Anil Chopra has replaced Om Chopra as the district president, Jammu Urban while Ashok Gupta is the new district president of Udhampur in place of Bhupender Singh Pathania.
Sain Abdul Rasheed and Khemlata Wakhloo have been appointed as new district president of Rajouri and Srinagar, respectively. They replaced Babu Ram Sharma (Rajouri) and Abdul Gani Khan (Srinagar).
Usman Majid has been appointed as president of DCC Bandipora replacing Habibullah Bhat while Arun Singh Raju is the new district president of Ramban in place in Bharat Gandhi. Haji Farooq Mir has replaced Mohd Amin Khan as president DCC Kupwara, while Aftab Ahmad Beigh is the new district president of Baramulla replacing Mushtaq Nowsheri.
Even as Suman Lata Bhagat, already appointed as vice-president PCC, has also been removed as district president, Jammu Rural, the post has been left vacant while Shashi Sharma and Shamsher Singh Chib have been assigned the position of working president.
Subash Gupta has been continued as the district president of Kathua and Pankaj Gupta is appointed as Working president of DCC Kathua.
R S Pathania, Gurdarshan Singh, Farooq Ahmad Katoch and Dr Syed Ahmad have been appointed as Working president of DCC Udhampur, Jammu Urban, Ramban and Srinagar, respectively.
Lovely Gupta and Master Som Nath are the working president of DCC Rajouri   while in DCC Kupwara, Baramulla and Bandipora, no one has been assigned this position.
Majority of these veterans, removed as district presidents, have been designated as Members Executive of J&K PCC. While some of them have been shifted because of their old age, others had turned so ineffective  that they did not conduct even a single meeting of DCC during their tenure, sources explained.
Even as the new district presidents and working presidents were appointed by PCC chief Prof Saif-ud-Din Soz about a fortnight ago, a senior Congress leader claimed that the party did not release  the list due to the unprecedented floods and consequent devastation in Jammu and Kashmir.
However, the sources attributed hesitation in making  the list public to unrest in State Congress over the reshuffle as  some aspirants, who were not accommodated in the DCC,  have registered their  protest before Prof Saif-ud-Din Soz.

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