Congress announced a major organizational shakeup on Friday, an exercise one section of the party hoped would end a growing buzz about differences between its younger leaders and the old guard, even as new discontent over the measure seemed to be emerging.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi formed a special five-member team to help her with day-to-day affairs; reconstituted the party’s Central Electoral Authority (CEA), which will conduct organizational polls to elect a new party president; renewed its highest decision-making body, the Central Work Committee (CWC); and removed some key faces, including senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and Mallikarjun Kharge, as general secretaries. However, both were retained at CWC.
The shakeup comes in the context of 23 congressional leaders, including four CWC members (Azad, Anand Sharma, Mukul Wasnik and Jitin Prasada), who wrote a letter to Sonia Gandhi on August 7 and called for full-time leadership. and an introspection behind the organization’s 135-year “steady decline” as the 11-point action plan is outlined.
The letter writers, who caused a stir and criticized the party, had demanded the election of the CWC members, and not the nomination as announced on Friday.
Some of them did not seem to be satisfied with the changes and the way they were carried out. “The wisdom of great minds has prevailed. The nomination seems to be the rule and the election is not even an exception, “said top leader Kapil Sibal, one of 23 signatories to the controversial letter, on Friday.
Manish Tewari, also a letter writer, said cryptically: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. I persevere in the hope that we will fulfill our duty to protect the idea of India for which Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Ambedkar gave their lives. “
While the four letter writers, who were part of the CWC, retained their places in the highest decision-making body, an indication, according to some officials, that the party leadership was trying to strike a conciliatory note, appeared to have a problem. Infusion of leaders close to Rahul Gandhi in other high-level organizational roles in every state.
At a CWC meeting on August 24, Sonia Gandhi had requested a committee to assist her in organizational and operational matters until the next session of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) to be held in six months.
The panel that will attend was made up of AK Antony, Ahmed Patel, Ambika Soni, KC Venugopal, Mukul Wasnik and Randeep Singh Surjewala, the party’s main spokesperson. Wasnik was one of the signatories to the letter.
The five-member CEA will be headed by Madhusudan Mistry and the members are Rajesh Mishra, Krishna Byre Gowda, S Jothimani and Arvinder Singh Lovely, another of the letter writers.
The newly appointed general secretaries included Surjewala (Karnataka), Jitendra Singh (Assam), and Tariq Anwar (Kerala and Lakshadweep).
The newly appointed managers were Dinesh Gundu Rao (Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Goa), Manickam Tagore (Telangana), Vivek Bansal (Haryana), Pawan Kumar Bansal (administration), Rajeev Shukla (Himachal Pradesh), HK Patil (Maharashtra), Devendra Yadav (Uttarakhand), Manish Chatrath (Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya), Bhakta Charan Das (Mizoram and Manipur) and Kuljit Singh Nagra (Sikkim, Nagaland and Tripura).
Digvijaya Singh, Salman Khurshid, Jairam Ramesh, Pramod Tiwari and Chinta Mohan will attend the CWC meetings; the body will have 22 members, 26 permanent guests and nine special guests. Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram was elevated from a permanent guest to a full-time member of the CWC.
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi, AK Antony, Ahmed Patel and Ambika Soni, among others, were retained as members of the CWC.
The restructuring also saw the departure of eight existing CWC members: Motilal Vora, Luizinho Falerio, Tamradhwaj Sahu, Asha Kumari, Gaurav Gogoi, Anugrah Narayan Singh, Ram Chandra Khuntia and Arun Yadav.
Gogoi, who was also removed as West Bengal’s secretary general in charge, said the decisions were part of a larger change.
“This is a huge exercise and I welcome these changes. This announcement will put an end to all rumors about camps and youth versus seniors, ”he said.
Prasada, a member of the CWC and one of the letter writers, will now deal with party affairs in West Bengal and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Those who were retained as general secretaries were Harish Rawat (Punjab), Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (Uttar Pradesh), Oommen Chandy (Andhra Pradesh), Ajay Maken (Rajasthan), KC Venugopal (organization). Retained managers included RPN Singh (Jharkhand), Rajani Patil (Jammu and Kashmir), PL Punia (Chhattisgarh), Shaktisinh Gohil (Bihar and Delhi), A Chellakumar (Odisha) and Rajeev Satav (Gujarat, Dadra and Nagar). Haveli, Daman and Diu).
“It is a new team with experience and youth. I want to thank Soniaji and Rahulji. In these vicious times, where lies and hatred consume this country, it is time for Congress to rise to the occasion. I am confident that this new team will rise to the occasion, ”said Dinesh Gundu Rao.
Manickam Tagore said: “It is going to be a great challenge. And the leadership has kept the younger team on the battlefield. The CWC’s policymaking body relies on all the senior party leaders on more important issues. “
.
