Team Herald
NEW DELHI: In a major reshuffle of the Congress, its President Sonia Gandhi, who has left for the United States for a medical checkup, has reconstituted the Congress Working Committee, formed a 6-member special committee to assist her in organisational and operational matters and dropped five senior general secretaries, namely Ambika Soni, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mallikarjun Kharge, Motilal Vora and Luizinho Faleiro.
Dinesh Gundu Rao has been appointed to look after the state affairs in Goa.
A caucus, who will assist Sonia, includes Ambika Soni who sought to be removed as the general secretary because of her age problems. Others in the caucus are Ahmed Patel, A K Antony, K C Venugopal, Mukul Wasnik and Randeep Singh Surjewala. They will continue to function till the next AICC session, said AICC General Secretary (Organisation) Venugopal.
Also dropped as state incharge are Gaurav Gogoi, Dr Ram Chandra Khuta, Anurag Narayan Singh and Asha Kumari. H K Patil is the new in-charge of Maharashtra, Vivek Bansal of Haryana which was hitherto with Azad, Rajani Patil of J&K and Jitin Pasada of West Bengal are among 17 state incharges.
Tariq Anwar, once most powerful political secretary of then president Sitaram Kesari, is back in the reckoning as incharge of Kerala and Lakshadweep. He is among nine general secretaries, most of whom have been retained. Party spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala has been elevated as a general secretary and given the charge of Karnataka.
A 3-member central election committee to conduct the organisational elections is headed by former general secretary Madhusudan Mistry from Gujarat and Rajesh Mishra and Krishna Byre Gowda as members.
The 22-member CWC consists of the Congress President, Dr Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Ahmed Patel, Ambika Soni, Gulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, Harish Rawat, K C Venugopal, Mallikarjun Kharge, Mukul Wasnik, Oommen Chandy, Ajay Maken, P Chidambaram, Jitendra Singh, Tariq Anwar, randeep Singh Surjewala, Gaikhangam, Raghuveer Singh Meena and Tarun Gogoi.
There are five special invitees to the CWC, namely Deepender Hooda, Kuldeep Bishnoi, Chinta Mohan, Sachin Rao and Mrs Sushmita Dev. Another 26 have been made the permanent invitees and they include Digvijaya Singh, Meira Kumar, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Jairam Ramesh, Salman Khurshid, Avinash Pandey, Pawan Kumar Bansal, P L Punia, Rajni Patil, R P N Singh, Shaktisinh Gohil, Rajiv Shukla and Bhakta Charan Das.
