Sonia dissolves Odisha party, spares state chief

New Delhi, Aug 26 (IANS) Following the party's drubbing in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Odisha, party interim President Sonia Gandhi on Monday dissolved all the committees, sparing the state unit chief and the working presidents.Congress General Secretary (Organisations) K.C. Venugopal in a release said, "The Congress President has dissolved the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) office-bearers and all other committees constituted for recently held Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Odisha with immediate effect.""The President and Working Presidents of Odisha PCC shall remain unchanged," it said.Niranjan Patnaik heads the party unit in the state while Chiranjiv Biswal and Pradeep Majhi are the Working Presidents. The Congress could manage to win only one out of 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state while in the assembly elections, it won nine out of 146 seats. In the 2014 polls for Odisha's 147-member Assembly, 16 Congress candidates had won. The party had failed to get victory in any of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2014.
--IANS aks/prs