Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury Resigns As Bengal Congress President

Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury resigned as the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee's chief after a meeting of the state unit of the committee this afternoon, convened to review the reasons behind the party's poor performance in the state in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections.

However, there is no official confirmation from the Congress leadership on whether his resignation has been accepted. Speculations have already surfaced over who would succeed him.

Confirming his resignation, Mr Chowdhury said, "Since Mallikarjun Kharge became the Congress's national president, there was no state president. Now when the full-time President is appointed you will all come to know that."

Incidentally, he made this announcement just a day after the Congress's Rajya Sabha member and former Union Finance Minister, P Chidambaram, dropped in at the state secretariat Nabanna and had a 35-minute meeting with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Adhir Chowdhury, a five-time party Lok Sabha MP from Murshidabad's Baharampur constituency, was defeated by the Trinamool Congress's celebrity candidate and former Indian cricketer Yusuf Pathan.

News about Mr Chowdhury's differences with the party's high command has been doing the rounds for quite some time over the issue of the party's relationship with the Trinamool.

Adhir Chowdhury has always been vocal about his views on having an electoral understanding with the CPI(M)-led Left Front. His differences with Mallikarjun Kharge also surfaced during the Lok Sabha polls.

Bengal Congress insiders said that the current party Lok Sabha member from Maldaha-Dakshin, Isha Khan Chowdhury, Congress's lone Lok Sabha MP from Bengal now, is one of the frontrunners for the top job in the party's Bengal unit.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)