The Hindu : Digvijay and Gehlot, special invitees to CWC

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jan 20, 2004

National

National

Digvijay and Gehlot, special invitees to CWC

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JAN. 19. The Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, today carried out a reshuffle in party hierarchy bringing in the former Chief Ministers, Ashok Gehlot and Digvijay Singh, as special invitees into the Congress Working Committee (CWC) and entrusting them with responsibilities of States.

The appointment of new political managers ahead of the Lok Sabha elections has been on the cards ever since the debacle at the Assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Barring Balram Jakhar, the new inductions into the party structure, were from the younger generation.

Last week, indicating an imminent reshuffle, Ms. Gandhi sought to dispute a projection that the appointments of Motilal Vora and J.B. Patnaik as the new State unit chiefs of Chhattisgarh and Orissa showed that the leadership preferred to rely on the `old guard' for the challenges ahead.

In the new scheme of things, Mr. Gehlot has been entrusted with the task of managing the affairs of Himachal Pradesh and Chhattisgarh while Mr. Digvijay Singh would take charge of Assam and Orissa. The reallocation saw the powerful general secretary, Ambika Soni, being divested of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

After the defeat of these two States in the December elections, knives were out for Ms. Soni, who had offered to step down from the post owning moral responsibility. Her offer was rejected and now she gets the responsibility of Uttaranchal in addition to Jammu and Kashmir. She continues to be part of the Congress president's office and head of the media department, though media management in the run-up to the December Assembly polls attracted criticism.

The members who have been added to the special invitee category in the CWC include the former Haryana state unit chief, Birender Singh, the Lok Sabha party chief whip, Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, the Rajya Sabha member, Prithviraj Chavan, Ramesh Chennithala and the former Union Minister, Balram Jakhar. The Congress president has also drafted Sarat Patnaik, who was removed as the Orissa Pradesh Congress chief last week, and the Karnataka MP, K.B. Krishna Murthy, as Secretaries. Mr. Patnaik would assist Salman Khursheed in a few Northeast States while Mr. Murthy would join the senior leader, Ghulam Nabi Azad, who remains in-charge of party affairs in Andhra Pradesh. Missing from the list of existing Secretaries was the former Youth Congress chief, Satyajit Sinh Gaekwad.

The reshuffle was aimed at bringing important States under senior and experienced leaders, with emphasis on those where Assembly polls were round the corner. For instance, the general secretary, Vyalar Ravi, has been left with just Maharahstra, while Karnataka, the other State under him, has now gone to the former Maharashtra Chief Minister, Vilas Rao Deshmukh. Mr. Deshmukh earlier held charge of Chhattisgarh.

The appointment of the former MP, Birender Singh, a Jat from Haryana, as in-charge of Uttar Pradesh, was a sort of a surprise considering the importance the State has in electoral calculations. Before this exercise, Mr. Birender Singh was member of the Central Election Committee. He replaced the senior leader, Nawal Kishore Sharma, who retains his position in the CWC.

Mr. Chavan from Maharashtra, who was part of the five-member panel that went into the reasons for the recent poll debacle, has been entrusted with the job of looking into party matters in Gujarat while Mr. Dasmunshi would be in charge of Madhya Pradesh.

Apart from some reallocation of work in some cases, those who held key task were retained. Mr. Vora would remain the treasurer and Ahmed Patel, the political secretary to the Congress president; in addition, he would be responsible for Kerala and Delhi.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National