Dalit leader Janardan Chandurkar is new MRCC chief

Dalit leader Janardan Chandurkar was today appointed president of the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee.
The 68-year-old three-time legislator succeeds Kripashankar Singh, who had resigned in February last year following the debacle of the Congress in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections and amid allegations of corruption.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi has appointed Janardan Chandurkar as president of the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee, AICC General Secretary Janardan Dwivedi said in a statement here.
Chandurkar, who was defeated in the 2009 assembly elections, is considered unaligned to any faction in the Mumbai unit of the Congress.
His name is learnt to have been proposed by Chief Minister Pritviraj Chavan. The lawyer-turned-politician had also met Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi last month.

In 2009, the Congress had won five of the six Lok Sabha seats and 17 out of 36 assembly seats in Mumbai.