Luizinho made permanent CWC invitee
NEW DELHI, FEB 19
The Congress party tonight brought former Goa chief minister and PCC President Luizinho Faleiro to the central politics and made him permanent invitee to CWC.
Carrying out a major organizational reshuffle ahead of Lok Sabha elections, the Congress also brought tonight senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad back as party general secretary and given charge of four states changing the work allocation of almost all other general secretaries.
Azad, former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister who has had one of the longest tenure in the Congress Working Committee, was given charge of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Orissa.
Azad has just returned to the Rajya Sabha as a member from Jammu and Kashmir.
Dropped as party in-charges are Ajay Maken, who was looking after Jharkhand and Orissa, Arun Kumar, in charge of Tamil Nadu, and Kishore Chandra Deo who was in charge of programme monitoring. Deo, Kumar and Maken will be contesting Lok Sabha polls and AICC sources made it clear that they have been discharged of their responsibilities to enable them to focus on polls.
Deo, however, was retained as a member of CWC.
Former Chief Ministers Vilasrao Deshmukh of Maharashtra and former Andhra Pradesh PCC Chief K Keshav Rao have been made permanent invitees to CWC.
The newly constituted AICC has as many as 38 secretaries, apart from 9 general secretaries. There are 22 members in CWC and 17 permanent invitees and 4 special invitees in CWC.
Motilal Vora continues to be the treasurer but gets another responsibility as party in-charge of administration.
V Narayansamy will continue to be the AICC General Secretary in-charge of Chhattisgarh along with Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Tripura.
A K Antony remains in-charge of Maharashtra where Sharad Pawar-led NCP is posing problems in seat-sharing talks.
Senior leader R K Dhawan has been made in-charge of Uttarakhand while Oscar Fernandes will be in-charge of AICC meetings and sessions.
With not much time at hand, Gandhi also constituted the Screening Committees of all the states to select the party candidates for the Lok Sabha elections.
External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee will be the Chairman of the Screening Committee of Andhra Pradesh and Assam.
