New Delhi: Congress president Sonia Gandhi appointed Gaurav Gogoi as the party’s deputy leader in the Lok Sabha and Ludhiana MP Ravneet Singh Bittu as its whip in the Lower House of Parliament on Thursday.
Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the leader of the opposition party in the Lok Sabha, and K Suresh, its chief whip in the Lower House, confirmed the development.
The appointments came ahead of the Monsoon Session of Parliament, which is likely to commence from September 14. It is seen as a move by the Congress to strengthen its team of floor leaders in the Lower House, party leaders said.
The opposition party did not have a deputy leader in the Lok Sabha till now.
A three-time MP from Punjab, Bittu has been entrusted with the responsibility of the Congress whip in the Lok Sabha. An MP from Tamil Nadu, Manickam Tagore, is the other whip of the party in the Lower House.
Gogoi hails from Assam, where Assembly polls are due early next year. The MP from the Kaliabor Lok Sabha constituency was the party’s whip in the House till now and has been elevated.
Gogoi is the son of former Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi. He was blessed with a daughter earlier this week.
During the previous Lok Sabha, Amarinder Singh was the deputy leader of the Congress, before he became the chief minister of Punjab.
(Report has been updated to reflect that Manickam Tagore is a Congress MP from Tamil Nadu and not Kerala.)
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Manikam Tagore is an MP From Tamilnadu.
The whole of south India still seems to be beyond the basic understanding of many a north-India based news platforms. Seems like you all need a serious geography lesson. I’m sure it’s considered polite to mention Mr Anurag Thakur as an MP from Uttarakhand or Mr Parvesh Verma as an MP from Haryana because they’re from the “same vicinity”. Please do better. Surely, Proof reading and fact checking figure somewhere in your SOP. Manickam Tagore does not represent any constituency in Kerala. He’s a two-time MP for god sake. He’s from TN. I’m done with news portals thinking it’s okay to just fumble with South Indians and we be cool about it. No we won’t!