The Congress has picked Krishna Allavaru, a close aide of Rahul Gandhi, as the in-charge of Bihar where Assembly elections are due later this year.

Allavaru, AICC national in-charge of the Indian Youth Congress, was given additional charge of poll-bound Bihar in the organisational rejig announced on Friday night that saw changes in the party structure in over a dozen states and Union Territories.

Allavaru will replace veteran Mohan Prakash and the appointment appears to have been made with an eye on smooth alliance talks. The Congress is a junior partner in the alliance led by the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar.

Former Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel and Rajya Sabha member Syed Naseer Hussain have been brought in as general secretaries of Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir, respectively. Hussain will also be general secretary of Ladakh and has been relieved of his role in the office of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.

Karnataka MLC B.K. Hariprasad, who faced disciplinary action in 2023 for publicly questioning chief minister Siddaramaiah, has been brought back to oversee Haryana, but as an in-charge. He has been AICC general secretary of Haryana in the past.

Two other close associates of Rahul have been tasked with overseeing states in this reshuffle. Former Lok Sabha member Meenakshi Natarajan has been made in charge of Telangana and K. Raju, the national coordinator of the party’s SC, ST, OBC and Minorities Cell, will be the new in-charge of Jharkhand.

Besides, Rajya Sabha member Rajni Patil has been made in charge of Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh; Harish Chaudhary of Madhya Pradesh; Girish Chodankar of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry; Ajay Kumar Lallu of Odisha; and Saptagiri Sankar Ulaka of Manipur, Tripura, Sikkim and Nagaland.

Like Hariprasad, Patil has held the leadership position in Himachal Prasad in the past, indicating a preference in the Congress’s central leadership to tap into the experience it has at hand to deal with these state units plagued with factionalism.