The All India Congress Committee (AICC) has constituted a new Media Department for the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC), appointing over 80 officials across multiple tiers to strengthen the party's communication and outreach machinery in India's most electorally significant state. The appointments were announced on Monday, 14 September 2026 by Pawan Khera, Member of the Congress Working Committee and Chairman of the AICC's Media and Publicity Department, from the party's New Delhi headquarters.

Structure of the New Department

The reconstituted department spans a wide operational hierarchy, including vice chairpersons, regional coordinators, state spokespersons, state media panellists, district spokespersons, a head of research, state researchers and state publicity coordinators. Priyanka Gupta and Sanjeev Kumar Singh have been named as Vice Chairpersons of the Media Department.

Six Regional Coordinators have been designated to cover distinct zones across Uttar Pradesh: Moin Hasan Khan (West Zone), Rajendra Sagar (Braj Zone), Prem Narayan Pal (Bundelkhand Zone), Dr Purvi Verma (Awadh Zone), Om Prakash Saroj (Prayag Zone), and Punit Pathak (East Zone).

State Spokespersons and Media Panellists

A large bench of state spokespersons has been constituted, comprising Annu Prasad Paswan, Siddhi Shree, Sachin Rawat, Ramesh Kashyap, Alimulla Khan, Mohd Farhan, Meraj Husain, Syed Mazhar Hussain, SU Frooqui, Umashankar Pandey, Anshu Awasthi, Dr Hilal Naqvi, Pradeep Singh Advocate, Achintya Tirpathi, Man Singh Chauhan, Pawan Dixit, Ravi Pratap Singh, Vishal Lodhi Rajput, Prof Ashok Kumar Kaithal, Prashant Singh Raickwar, Gaurav Jain, Prerna Zubairi, Dr Rahul Rajbhar, Piyush Yadav, Minhaj Khan, Anil Yadav, Pankhuri Pathak, Ishan Tyagi, Nighat Abbass, Dolly Sharma, Abhimanyu Tyagi, Pratima Gond, SK Nigam, Amar Habibullah, Vishwambhar Nath Prajapati, Vijay Kumar Pal, Dr Umesh Gond, Amar Deep Jain, Ashish Anand, Aqib Nadeem Qureshi, Arvind Singh, Suraj Bhan Singh, Dr Ratna N. Pandey, Asif Jah, and Sadaf Jafar.

The state media panellists named are Murli Manohar, Usha Rani Kori, Saroj Bharti, Rajkumar Maurya, Malik Javed Ansari, Kanhaiya Lal Yadav Bhartiya, Ram Roop Patel, Arshad Raza, Hammam Wahid, Chandini Ahmad, Haseeb Ahmad, Rajesh Singh, Harinath Upadhyay, Ashok Singh, Anil Sharma, Anuj Gautam, Ajay Chandra Chaubey, Vinayak Dhar Dwivedi, Rajesh Tiwari, Agha Yunus, and Tamjeed Ahmad.

District Spokespersons and Research Wing

At the district level, Rahul Rai, Himanshu Chaudhary, Vivek Ojha, Shiv Kumar Gautam, Mohit Shyam, Dr Yashwant Singh, and Savitri Tripathi have been named as spokespersons. Hilal Naqvi has been designated Head of Research.

The State Researchers team includes Varun Shekhar Singh, Kanchan Varshney, Mohammad D Afzal, Karan Kumar Kushwaha, Abhimanyu Kumar, Abhishek Kumar Singh, Mohit Pratap Singh, Teerath Raj Mishra, Ritesh Yadav, Akash Kumar Chaurasiy, and Abhishekh Tyagi.

Publicity Coordinators and the Broader Context

State Publicity Coordinators appointed are Akshay Singh, Aman Kumar, Anurag Prakash, Sangita Srivastava, Prince Kumar Morya, Vaibhavish Chandra, Shiv Murti Yadav, Umesh Kumar Gautam, Shamim Uddin, Sandeep Kumar, and Anjali Upadhyay.

The overhaul is aimed at bolstering Congress's communication, publicity, and research infrastructure ahead of future electoral contests in Uttar Pradesh, a state that sends the largest contingent of 80 Lok Sabha seats and where the party has struggled to regain lost ground. This comes amid broader efforts by the AICC to revitalise its state units, particularly in Hindi-heartland states where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has held a dominant position for over a decade. The new structure's zonal approach — dividing UP into six communication regions — signals a more granular, ground-level messaging strategy from the Congress.

The full activation of the new department and its impact on the party's communication cadence in UP will become clearer in the weeks ahead.