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Pranab Mukherjee named Bengal Cong chief: PTI

Congress leader A B A Ghani Khan Chowdhury, who was at loggerheads with the party high command on various issues, including a 'grand alliance', was removed on Tuesday as West Bengal pradesh Congress committee president.

He was replaced by senior leader Pranab Mukherjee.

The announcement was made by All-India Congress Committee general secretary Prabha Rau who told reporters in New Delhi that Chowdhury has been made a special invitee of the Congress working committee as his advice would be "more useful in Delhi".

With the appointment of Mukherjee as PCC president, P R Dasmunshi ceases to be the working president of the WBPCC as Rau announced that there would be no working president in the revamped set-up. She said that Dasmunshi has been preoccupied with much work as the party's chief whip in the Lok Sabha.

Rau said that the new PCC executive would be decided after consultations with Mukherjee, who is going to New Delhi on Wednesday. She said all groups in the state unit would be accomodated in the new set-up.

The PCC revamp has come at the end of a series of exercises initiated by the AICC to tone up the organisation, ahead of the assembly polls in the state early next year.

Rau said that the process of organisational elections would continue in the state.

Chowdhury, who had earlier met party president Sonia Gandhi, was a strong supporter of Trinamul Congress leader Mamata Banerjee's proposal of a grand alliance aimed at ousting the Communist Party of India-Marxists from power in the state.

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