What could be termed the Congress core team for the next general elections and the second Kamaraj Plan for the party as it sees increased threat from BJP under Narendra Modi, party vice-president and PM candidate Rahul Gandhi on Sunday brought in former Union ministers Ajay Maken and CP Joshi along with Ambika Soni and Gurudas Kamat as general secretaries and dropped Ghulam Nabi Azad and Oscar Fernandes.
Making largescale changes in the organisation, Congress president Sonia Gandhi retained Ahmed Patel as her political secretary but significantly made Ambika Soni as general secretary incharge of the Congress president's office.
With this, the party perhaps for the first time has as many as 12 general secretaries. The Kamaraj Plan refers to a political plan propounded by the late Congress leader from Tamil Nadu K Kamaraj in 1963, under which he wanted all senior Congress leaders resign from their ministerial posts and devote all their energy to re-vitalise the party. The plan had the support of Jawaharlal Nehru.
Six Union ministers and six chief ministers including Lal Bahadur Shastri, Jagjivan Ram, Morarji Desai, Biju Patnaik and SK Patil resigned from their posts. In 1964, Kamaraj was elected the Congress president and he successfully navigated the nation through the stormy years following Nehru's death.
Soni was the political secretary before Patel replaced her nearly a decade ago. Soni had also held the charge of Sonia’s office earlier.
Madhusudan Mistri, who hails from Gujarat and is considered close to Rahul, got the charge of key Uttar Pradesh with Digvijay Singh being given the responsibility of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Goa.
Other general secretaries who have been dropped included Vilas Muttamwar and Birender Singh. Among the incharges of various states who failed to get renomination were Jagmeet Singh Brar, Jagdish Tytler and Gulchain Singh Charak.
Those who have been elevated as general secretaries include Mohan Prakash, Shakeel Ahmed and Luizinho Faleiro who were earlier permanent invitees to Congress Working Committee and incharge of various states.
With Lok Sabha polls less than a year away, Maken has been entrusted with the newly-created communication, publicity and publication wing which will now include the media department of the party. The media department was being handled for the last six years by Janardan Dwivedi.
Priya Dutt will be assisting Maken as secretary with the party appointing as many as 42 secretaries. Maken and Joshi had resigned as Union ministers last night. A senior leader remarked that the changes in the organisation showed that this a new generation takeover as the average age of the apex policy making body of the party, the CWC, is now 52 while it was much more earlier.
Rahul, who took over as party vice-president in January this year, has kept to himself the charge of front organisations with Prabha Kishor Taviad and Suraj Hegde set to help him as secretaries.
Joshi has been entrusted with party affairs in Assam, Bihar, Bengal and Andaman and Nicobar Islands, while Gurudas Kamat gets Gujarat, Rajasthan, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, and Daman & Diu.
Ambika Soni also gets Himachal, J&K and Uttarakhand. Faleiro has been made in charge of the six Northeastern states except Assam, while Mukul Wasnik, who had been in charge of Rajasthan for a record eight years, is now heading South looking after Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Pudducherry and Lakshadweep.
Hari Prasad retains the poll-bound Chhattisgarh and also gets Jharkhand and Orissa. Mohan Prakash retains Maharashtra as general secretary and has also been given poll-bound MP earlier with Hari Prasad.
Shakeel Ahmed is in charge of Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Chandigarh. Party veteran Moti Lal Vora has been retained as the treasurer and also in charge administration.
Significantly, former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh and Union minister Beni Prasad Verma, a known detractor of SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, and former Chhattisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi have been made permanent invitees to the CWC.
Finance minister P Chidambaram continues as permanent invitee, so also former ministers Murli Deora and SM Krishna. Anil Shastri, Raj Babbar, Rashid Masood, Mohinder Singh Kaypee and G Sanjeeva Reddy have been made special invitees to the CWC. Dwivedi will now look after AICC meetings, AICC departments, CWC, organisation as also co-ordination.
With Azad no longer general secretary, Digvijay Singh will have to handle the tricky issue of Telangana being in charge of Andhra. Dwivedi said Azad has not found a place as general secretary and Joshi and Maken have now only become general secretaries as the party in its chintan shivir in Jaipur had decided that a person should either be in the government or the party.
Senior leader Mohsina Kidwai has just been made permanent member of the CWC as she wrote to the Congress president suggesting that she should be given light work due to her advancing age.
Besides Sonia and Rahul and the prime minister, other members of the CWC are AK Antony, Ahmed Patel, Hema Prova Saikia, Sushila Tiriya and all party general secretaries and the treasurer. The new secretaries include Geetashree Oraon, Mainul Haque, Sanjay Kapoor, Subhankar Sarkar, Paresh Dhanani, A Chella Kumar, Thiruvanakassar, Ashwanti Sekhri, Sajjan Kumar Verma, Bhupen Kumar Borah, Naseeb Singhm, Prakash Singh, Rana Goswami and Zuber Khan.
