Sonia reshuffles CWC, drops some veterans

Congress party president Sonia Gandhi dropped a few veterans and paved the way for new faces in the apex body, the Congress Working Committee.

Arjun Singh (he died a few hours after the new CWC was announced) and Mohsina Kidwai were shifted from being members to permanent invitees and G Venkataswamy, who had recently expressed criticism on Gandhi’s leadership was dropped. Oscar Fernandes, considered a trusted lieutenant of Gandhi, was promoted to the CWC. He was also made a party general secretary.

Home minister P Chidambaram was made a permanent invitee. With an eye on the coming Uttar Pradesh assembly poll, Union minister Beni Prasad Verma was also made a permanent invitee.

K Keshava Rao, former Andhra Pradesh Congress unit chief and who was in charge of West Bengal and Jharkhand units, was dropped, as was fellow Andhra MP, V Kishore Chandra Deo. Keeping in mind the volatile situation in Andhra, in the wake of the renewed demand for Telangana, she has not kept any representative of the state in the reconstituted CWC.

Union Ministers Mallikarjun Kharge and V Narayanaswamy and Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan have also been dropped. So has ex-Maharashtra CM and present Union cabinet minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh.

Apart from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi (who retains charge of the party’s youth wings), veterans such as Pranab Mukherjee, A K Antony, Janardhan Dwivedi, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Ambika Soni and Digvijay Singh retained their place. Motilal Vora was renamed treasurer.

Ahmed Patel retained his position as political secretary to Congress president. He also retained his place in the CWC. The new CWC now has 19 members.

Satyavrat Chaturvedi, often reprimanded for untimely comments, has been removed as a permanent invitee. Apart from Oscar Fernandes, Birender Singh and Madhusudan Mistry have been inducted as general secretaries’ incumbent ones were retained.