MP Youth Congress without president

Bhopal, Jan 13:  The Madhya Pradesh Youth Congress might have to wait longer for its new chief, as in charge of Youth Congress Rahul Gandhi is busy in finding new Indian Youth Congress (IYC), which is packed with overage office bearers. For the past two years, the post of Madhya Pradesh Youth Congress president is lying vacant, after former president Minakshi Natrajan was given other responsibility in the orgnaisation.

Those leaders who are in the fray are MLAs Rajwardhan Singh and Priyavrat Singh, Youth Congress office bearer Kamleshwar Patel, former office bearers Chandrakant Dube, Mrinal Pant and Mukesh Punjabi. Surprisingly, some of the aspirants have also reached the upper limit. As per party constitution, Youth Congress president should not exceed 35 years of age but in several states, the youth wing chiefs have crossed the upper age limit. In several states like Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, the youth wing is functioning headless. States like West Bengal, Assam, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat have over-age state youth Congress presidents.

On paper of course, the Indian Youth Congress prides itself as world's "largest democratic youth organization" with over 4000000 (forty lakh) members. Though the Youth Congress existed as a department of the main organization pre-and-post independence, In 1971, Priyaranjan Das Munshi became the first elected president when Indira Gandhi established IYC as party's frontal organization to fight against right-wing parties at Indore session of the AICC. Incidentally, Munshi is the only elected chief as his successors Ambika Soni, Ramchandra Rath, Ghulam Nabi Azad to Tanwar were appointed to the post. Most of the senior party leaders have worked as Madhya Pradesh Youth Congress president.

They include Arjun Singh, Shivkumar Singh, Bhanwar Singh Porte, Mahesh Joshi, Vishnu Rajoria, Bansilal Gandhi, Manohar Bairagi, Pratap Bhanu Sharma, Rameshwar Neekhra, Uttamchand Khatik, Suresh Pachouri, Surendra Singh Thakur, Mukesh Nayak, Premchand Guddu, Govind Rajput, and Minakshi Natrajan. Old timers who were part of the youth Congress say much of the problems come from leadership's lack of understand and charter for its youth wing. In last one decade or so, some IYC chiefs like Manish Tiwari Tanwar and have jumped straight from NSUI to IYC while others like Satyajit Gaedwad and Randeep Singh Surjewala headed the youth wing with no prior stay in IYC.