New Delhi: Inside per week of his letter to Sonia Gandhi flagging “mistaken choices and misguided management decisions” weakening the occasion, the Congress on Monday expelled its former Odisha MLA Mohammed Moquim. The MLA’s letter additionally urged a key central position for Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

“That is for the data of all involved that AICC (All India Congress Committee) has accredited the proposal for the expulsion of Sri Md Moquim from the first membership of the occasion, attributable to anti-party actions,” the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee stated in an announcement.

In his letter to Sonia Gandhi, Moquim, who had snatched the Barabati-Cuttack meeting constituency in 2019 from the ruling BJD, sought a central position for Priyanka Gandhi Vadra within the occasion’s affairs, mentioning his incapacity to satisfy Rahul Gandhi for nearly three years regardless of being an MLA.

“Madam, with utmost humility, I firmly consider the nation, and particularly its youth, are ready for Smt Priyanka Gandhi-ji to take a central, seen, and energetic management position. It’s equally necessary that leaders like Shri Sachin Pilot, Shri D.Ok. Shivakumar, Shri A. Revanth Reddy, Dr Shashi Tharoor amongst others, type the core management of the occasion going ahead, as they’ve the credibility, vitality, and connection wanted to encourage and mobilise younger Indians,” he wrote.

In 2024, Moquim’s daughter Sofia Firdous gained the Barabati-Cuttack seat, turning into one of many 14 successful candidates from the Congress, and the primary Muslim girl to get elected to the Odisha meeting. Moquim couldn’t contest as he was convicted in a mortgage fraud case.

Founder and managing director of the Metro Group, a outstanding actual property participant in Odisha, Moquim was scathing in his criticism of OPCC president Bhakta Charan Das, appointed to the place in February 2025, saying he couldn’t even “safe belief in his personal constituency”.

By the way, Firdous has emerged as a outstanding political face in Odisha attributable to her energetic interventions throughout meeting classes and her capability to articulate the occasion’s place on varied points.

Moquim, in his five-page letter, stated the Congress requires deep structural, organisational and ideological renewal, with out which “we threat shedding our relevance and fading into the annals of historical past, which might be a tragedy not only for the occasion, however for the concept of India itself”.

He underlined the occasion’s “deep and rising disconnect” with Indian youth.

“With due respect, beneath the present management model, particularly with Shri Mallikarjun Kharge-ji being 83 years outdated, the occasion is unable to resonate with India’s youth,” wrote Moquim, forwarding copies of the letter to Kharge and Lok Sabha Chief of Opposition Rahul Gandhi as properly.

The Congress’s plight, Moquim wrote, has grow to be alarming and insufferable, and but, moderately than correcting its errors, the occasion was repeating them.

“In Odisha, now we have confronted 6 consecutive defeats, and on the nationwide stage, now we have just lately endured 3 main setbacks back-to-back. Our presence is shrinking geographically, organisationally, and even emotionally. The current outcomes in Bihar, Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra and Kashmir, the place our defeats had been by staggering margins, are usually not simply electoral setbacks; they replicate a deeper organisational disconnect. A sequence of mistaken choices, misguided management decisions, and the continued focus of accountability within the mistaken arms have weakened the occasion from inside,” he added.

(Edited by Viny Mishra)

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