Bhubaneswar: The Congress has constituted a Political Affairs Committee (PAC) for the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC), with senior party leader Lalji Desai appointed as its chairperson, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) said in a press release on Friday.
The committee has been constituted with the approval of Congress President and will come into effect immediately, according to the statement issued by AICC General Secretary K C Venugopal.
Besides Desai, the committee includes several senior Odisha Congress leaders, including Bhakta Charan Das, Ramachandra Kadam, former chief ministers Giridhar Gamang and Niranjan Pattnaik, Jaydev Jena, Sarat Pattanayak, Prasad Harichandan, Saptagiri Shankar Ulaka, Rama Chandra Khuntia, Narasingha Mishra and Srikant Jena.
Jagannath Pattnaik, Kishore Patel, Amar Nath Pradhan, Suresh Routray, Nagendra Pradhan, Panchanan Kanungo, Sarat Rout, Saraswati Hembram, Ananta Prasad Sethi, Tara Prasad Bahinipati, C S Razeen Ekka and Santosh Singh Saluja are also members of the panel.
The committee further includes Debashish Pattnaik, Shibananda Roy, Biswaranjan Mohanty, Sashmita Behera and Sidharth Sworup Dash.
The AICC secretaries attached to Odisha, along with the presidents of Pradesh Mahila Congress, Pradesh Youth Congress and NSUI, and the State Seva Dal chief, have been designated as ex-officio members of the committee.
The move comes as the Congress seeks to strengthen its organisational and political coordination in Odisha through a broad-based panel comprising senior leaders and representatives of various party wings.
