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Sonia shakes up CWC, dumps veep's post

In a much-awaited step, Congress president Sonia Gandhi today reconstituted the party's working committee and appointed new office-bearers.

Though all the elected members of the Congress Working Committee have been retained, the post of vice president, hitherto held by Jitendra Prasada, has been abolished, as has the post of joint secretary.

There will be seven nominated members, three permanent invitees and two special invitees to the CWC, and five general secretaries and ten secretaries.

Purno A Sangma, Sushil Kumar Shinde and Rajesh Pilot have been nominated to the CWC, in addition to the ten elected members and four existing nominated members. The nominated members who have been retained are Manmohan Singh, A K Antony, Oscar Fernandes, and Meira Kumar.

The elected members are Ahmed Patel, Arjun Singh, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Jitendra Prasada, Madhavrao Scindia, Pranab Mukherjee, R K Dhawan, Sharad Pawar, Tariq Anwar and K Vijaybhaskara Reddy.

Former Congress president Sitaram Kesri, former Kerala chief minister K Karunakaran and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Motilal Vora have been made permanent invitees to the CWC, while Madhavsinh Solanki and V N Gadgil will be special invitees.

Orissa Chief Minister J B Patnaik and Mizoram Chief Minister Lalthanhawla, who were nominated members to the CWC, have been dropped.

There will be three spokespersons for the party in place of V N Gadgil, who held the post of official spokesman for the last seven years. The new spokespersons, Salman Khursheed, Ajit Jogi and Ambika Soni, have been serving as additional spokespersons from the eve of the last Lok Sabha poll.

All the PCC presidents and Congress legislature party leaders will be invitees to extended meetings of the CWC.

In another significant move, Mani Shankar Aiyar, who dissociated himself from the Congress and joined the Trinamul Congress of Mamata Banerjee, has been taken back and made one of the ten secretaries. The other secretaries are Ramesh Chennithala, Mukul Wasnik, V Narayana Swami, Selja Kumari, Sudhir Sawant, Anil Shastri, Imran Kidwai, Usha Meena and S C Vats.

With the post of joint secretary having been abolished, Jairam Ramesh, one of the former joint secretaries, has been made secretary in the economic affairs department headed by Dr Manmohan Singh.

K Natwar Singh will be chairman of the foreign affairs department and Anil Mithrani its secretary.

UNI

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