Dissenters stay in new Cong panels
The Congress announced a major organisational reshuffle on Friday, an exercise that a section in the party hoped will put a lid on a growing buzz over differences between its younger leaders and the old guard, even as fresh discontent appeared to be brewing over the move.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi formed a five-member special team that will help her in day-to-day matters; reconstituted the party’s Central Election Authority, which will conduct the organisational polls to elect a new party president; revamped its highest decision-making body, the Central Working Committee (CWC); and removed some key faces, including senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and Mallikarjun Kharge, as general secretaries. However, both of them were retained in CWC.
The reshuffle comes against the backdrop of 23 Congress leaders, including four CWC members (Azad, Anand Sharma, Mukul Wasnik and Jitin Prasada), writing a letter to Sonia Gandhi on August 7, and calling for full-time leadership and an introspection behind the “steady decline” of the 135-year-old organisation while outlining 11-point action plan.
The letter-writers, who triggered a flutter and drew flak from the party, had demanded the election of CWC members, and not nomination as announced on Friday.
Some of them did not appear to be satisfied with the changes, and the manner in which they were carried out. “The wisdom of great minds has prevailed. Nomination seems to be the rule and election is not even an exception,” senior leader Kapil Sibal, one of the 23 signatories of the controversial letter, said.
Manish Tewari, also a letterwriter, cryptically said: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. I persevere in the hope that we shall do our duty to protect the idea of India that Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Ambedkar gave their lives for.”
While the four letter-writers, who were part of the CWC, retained their place in the highest decision-making body — an indication, according to some functionaries, that the party leadership was trying to strike a conciliatory note — there appeared to be an infusion of leaders close to Rahul Gandhi in other senior organisational roles across states. In an August 24 CWC meeting, Sonia Gandhi had
asked for a committee to help her in organisational and operational affairs till the next session of the AICC to be held within six months.
The panel that will assist her comprised AK Antony, Ahmed Patel, Ambika Soni, KC Venugopal, Mukul Wasnik and Randeep Singh Surjewala, the party’s chief spokesperson. Wasnik was one of signatories of 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 letterwriters.
The newly inducted general secretaries included Surjewala (Karnataka), Jitendra Singh (Assam) and Tariq Anwar (Kerala and Lakshadweep).
The newly appointed in-charges 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).
I persevere in the hope that we shall do our duty to protect the idea of India that Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Ambedkar gave their lives for.
MANISH TEWARI, MP,
Shri Anandpur Saheb