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Congress Working Committee expanded

Congress president Sonia Gandhi today expanded the party's working committee, inducting four women leaders as the first step in implementing the party's constitutional amendment providing 33 per cent reservation to women in organisational posts.

Former Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee president and former Union minister Mohsina Kidwai, Tribal Welfare Corporation chairperson Ganga Potai, Mahila Congress president Ambika Soni, and former president of the Andhra Pradesh Mahila Congress and former Andhra Pradesh minister M Lakshmi Devi, are the new members. With this, the CWC's strength has gone up to 18.

The current members, besides the president, are Arjun Singh, Jitendra Prasada, Pranab Mukherjee, Sharad Pawar, K Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy, A K Antony, Meira Kumar, Sushil Kumar Shinde, Ahmed Patel, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Madhavrao Scindia, R K Dhawan, Tariq Anwar, Dr Manmohan Singh, Oscar Fernandes, P A Sangma and Rajesh Pilot. Sitaram Kesri, K Karunakaran and Motilal Vora are permanent invitees while Madhavsinh Solanki and V N Gadgil are special invitees.

Announcing this, All-India Congress Committee general secretary Oscar Fernandes said two more women members would be added to the CWC soon.

Gandhi has also set up two new AICC departments to strengthen the organisation's activities among the minority communities, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. CWC member Arjun Singh will head the department for minority affairs while the department for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes will be run by another CWC member, Meira Kumar.

Fernandes indicated that work in the party secretariat might also be reallocated soon.

The constitutional amendment to ensure members of the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other weaker sections hold 20 per cent seats in the CWC has already been fulfilled.

Fernandes said the department of minority affairs would monitor the implementation of the Congress president's intensified programme for the welfare and protection of minorities and it would attend to all issues relating to minorities.

The other new committee would monitor the implementation of the policies and programmes of the Congress and attend to all issues relating to scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and backward classes.

Shivraj Patil, chairman of the AICC media department, said the party president has attached considerable importance to the intensified programme for the welfare and protection of minorities, announced by her on the occasion of the 50th death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi yesterday.

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