Rahul cachet evident as Sonia revamps Congressional working committee

Days after several top Congress leaders penned a letter calling for a major overhaul of the party, Acting Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Friday fired four AICC general secretaries and reconstituted the Congress working committee, l supreme decision-making body of the party.

While Ghulam Nabi Azad, Motilal Vora, Ambika Soni and Mallikarjun Kharge were replaced as AICC General Secretaries, P Chidambaram, Randeep Surjewala, Tariq Anwar and Jitendra Singh were appointed regular members of the revamped CWC.

These four new CWC members will replace Goa veteran Luizinho Faleiro, who was also dismissed as AICC Secretary General, Vora, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and Tamradhwaj Sahu. While Chowdhury was named a permanent CWC guest, the other three were dropped. Interestingly, Chowdhury was previously a regular member of the CWC.

Gandhi also restructured the party’s central electoral authority, with Madhusudan Mistry being named the new president. Rajesh Misra, Krishna Byre Gowda, S Jothimani and Arvinder Singh Lovely became members. This restructuring is gaining in importance since it is the CEA that will elect the new president of the Congress.

The 73-year-old leader has also formed a special six-member committee to help her with organizational matters. The special committee will include AK Antony, Ahmed Patel, Ambika Soni, KC Venugopal, Mukul Wasnik and Randeep Surjewala among its members.

Significant Rahul effect

The organizational changes bore the imprint of Rahul Gandhi, with the majority of new appointees known to be his close associates, including general secretaries Surjewala, Ajay Maken, Jitendra Singh and KC Venugopal.

Some of the young leaders seen as close to him were given key organizational roles as officials of various states and named in the reconstituted CWC as permanent and special guests.

Surjewala, currently in charge of the communications department of the AICC, has also been appointed secretary general in charge of the Karnataka Congress.

Digvijaya Singh, former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh; former Union ministers Jairam Ramesh and Salman Khurshid, top leader Avinash Pande have been named permanent guests at the CWC. Leaders like Pramod Tiwari, Pawan Kumar Bansal, Rajeev Shukla, Dinesh Gundu Rao, Manickam Tagore, HK Patil, Devender Yadav, Vivek Bansal, Manish Chatrath, Kuljit Nagra and Bhakta Charan Das have also been permanent guests at CWC.

The Group of 23

Among the leaders of the “Group of 23”, who wrote a letter to Gandhi asking for an overhaul of the Congress, Azad and Sharma would continue to be regular members of the CWC.

Turkish youngster from Uttar Pradesh and confidant of Rahul, Jitin Prasada, would now be a permanent guest of the CWC. Previously, he was a special guest. Prasada was also in charge of party affairs in West Bengal and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Wasnik, another leader who was among the letter writers, was appointed AICC General Secretary for Madhya Pradesh. Delhi leader Lovely, also from the “Group of 23”, was welcomed as a member of the CEA.

Anugrah Narayan Singh, Asha Kumari, Gaurav Gogoi and Ram Chandra Khuntia were among those dropped by Congress as state officials.

New managers

There has been no change in the role of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra who will now be Secretary General in charge of AICC for Uttar Pradesh. She was previously the General Secretary of East Uttar Pradesh, but took care of virtually the entire state after Jyotiraditya Scindia, who was General Secretary of Uttar Pradesh (West), resigned and joined the BJP.

New AICC Secretaries General included Harish Rawat for Punjab, Oomen Chandy for Andhra Pradesh, Tariq Anwar for Kerala and Lakshadweep, Jitendra Singh for Assam, Maken for Rajasthan and KC Vengopal for the Organization.

While Bansal was in charge of the administration of the AICC, Rajni Patil would oversee the party’s affairs in Jammu and Kashmir. Veteran leader PL Punia would oversee Chhattisgarh, former Union minister RPN Singh would be responsible for Jharkhand), Gujarat strongman Shaktisinh Gohil would be responsible for Delhi and poll-linked Bihar. The young Turk from Maharashtra Rajeev Satav would be the new responsible for Gujarat, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, while the former Union Minister Rajeev Shukla would now take care of Himachal Pradesh.

Dinesh Gundu Rao (Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Goa), Manickam Tagore (Telangana), Chellakumar (Odisha), HK Patil (Maharashtra), Devender Yadav (Uttarakhand), Vivek Bansal (Haryana), Manish Chatrath (Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya), Bhakta Charan Das (Mizoram and Manipur) and Kuljit Singh Nagra (Sikkim, Nagaland and Tripura) were the other nominations for the States.

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