Thiruvananthapuram (PTI): Senior leader and three-time MLA Sunny Joseph on Monday took charge as the new president of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) at an event here.

In a function held at the party headquarters here, outgoing president K Sudhakaran handed over the charge of the party state unit to Joseph.

Besides Joseph, P C Vishnunath MLA, Shafi Parambil MP, and A.P. Anil Kumar MLA assumed office as working presidents of the state Congress, and Adoor Prakash MP took charge as the UDF convener during the ceremony.

Several party leaders and workers gathered at the headquarters to witness the long-awaited leadership change ahead of the upcoming crucial local body polls and the state assembly election.

Before proceeding to the KPCC headquarters, Sunny Joseph visited Congress veteran A.K. Antony at his residence here and sought his support and blessings for the new role.

Addressing reporters here later, Antony said he has complete confidence in the new team under Joseph.

He said the AICC leadership has entrusted the team with the responsibility of bringing back the Congress-led UDF into power in Kerala in the upcoming Assembly polls.

"I have complete confidence that the new team led by Joseph can fulfil their responsibility. If they can win the trust of all sections of people besides strengthening the Congress and the UDF, we can achieve a greater victory in 2026 than the party garnered in 2001," he said.

It was on May 8 that the AICC underwent a complete overhaul of the leadership in the state by replacing Sudhakaran with three-time MLA Sunny Joseph, ending weeks of uncertainty over a change of guard in the Congress party in Kerala.

Although Sudhakaran had expressed his disapproval of the move to remove him from the KPCC post, the party high command took the decision to bring in a new face ahead of the crucial elections in the state.

Sudhakaran has been made a permanent invitee to the Congress Working Committee (CWC), in a bid to balance the group equations within the party unit in Kerala.

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Kolkata (PTI): Seven people were arrested from the Parnashree area in the southern part of the city for allegedly running a fake call centre, a police officer said on Saturday.

Acting on a tip-off, police raided a house on Netaji Subhas Road on Friday night and found the fake call centre operating from the ground floor, he said.

Preliminary investigation revealed that the accused had set up a bogus company using forged documents and posed as employees of an antivirus firm to call citizens in the US, the officer said.

"The callers would gain the trust of victims and then use remote access to take control of their phones or other digital devices. The accused allegedly siphoned off large sums of money, running into millions of dollars, from victims' accounts," he said.

Five laptops, two WiFi routers, six mobile phones and four headsets were seized from the accused, he said, adding that the seven are being questioned to ascertain the full extent of the racket and to identify others involved.