New Delhi, March 19: The Congress’ much-hyped Mission Bihar seems to have gone awry with AICC Bihar in-charge Jagdish Tytler and state Congress chief Anil Kumar Sharma engaging in a clash to save their Bihar jobs.
While the party high command is unsure whether it should go ahead with a change of guard in an election year, many senior Congress leaders from the state, including former PCC chief Sadanand Singh and CLP leader Ashok Ram, are camping in the capital seeking Sharma’s removal. They have met Ahmed Patel, political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, and AICC general secretaries to demand change of leadership in the state.
Another section of the party has been demanding removal of both Sharma and Tytler. But sources said Sonia is yet to decide on the issue.
While sources said Tytler had submitted a report to Patel recommending Sharma’s removal, the latter said he was not sure of such a report though he was aware of moves to search for an alternative to him. “I also heard that Tytlerji will now go to Bihar with the new Congress president,” said Sharma, also camping in Delhi to make his case before Sonia.
Relations between Tytler and Sharma soured after the caste list goof-up in which Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar’s caste was mentioned in one of the BPCC committees. Things worsened after Tytler started supporting controversial former RJD MP Pappu Yadav, whose wife Ranjeet Ranjan is in the Congress.
Sharma said: “I was getting suffocated and humiliated for not toeing Tytler’s line on Pappu. It is true that Ranjeet was inducted into the party during my current tenure but it does not mean that she will demolish party discipline with impunity”. She had recently said that Sonia and Rahul Gandhi cannot help the party win in Bihar.
Tytler and Sharma again clashed when Sadhu Yadav opposed the Women’s Bill. While Sharma took prompt action by suspending Yadav with a show-cause notice, Tytler revoked it within hours, much to the BPCC chief embarrassment.
The immediate casualty of the clash has been the abrupt discontinuation of the party’s Parivartan Yatra after covering only 11 of 38 Bihar districts. It is learnt that the Yatra would resume only after Tytler arrives in Patna after sorting out the internal feud.
—–Agencies