Sonia goes in for major revamp
Pranab, Scindia, Dhawan lose posts
Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI, Dec 23 — Nearly two years after becoming the Congress President, Mrs Sonia Gandhi today revamped the organisation dropping Mr R K Dhawan as the General Secretary and inducting Mr Pawan Bansal and Mrs Santosh Chaudhary, both as Secretaries.

The former Haryana Chief Minister, Mr Bhajan Lal has been made a special invitee to the 28-member Congress Working Committee along with the Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker, Mr P M Sayeed and Mr Madhavsinh Solanki.

Mrs Mohsina Kidwai, Mr Motilal Vora and Mrs Prabha Rao are the new General Secretaries while Mrs Ambika Soni, Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mr Oscar Fernandes and Mr Sushil Kumar Shinde have been retained.

The Nagaland Chief Minister, Mr S.C. Jamir, has been made a permanent invitee, a move to accommodate a senior party member from the North-East against the vacancy caused by the expulsion of Mr P A Sangma. Mr Sitaram Kesri and Mr K. Karunakaran have been retained in the position.

Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr Vora, will be in charge of party affairs in Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. Mr V Narayanswamy will be the Secretary in charge.

After today’s revamp, the CWC has a strength of 22 including the party chief, apart from three each in the permanent and special invitee sections.

Of the new faces in the CWC are Mr K Natwar Singh, who headed the party’s Foreign Affairs Department, Mr Narain Dutt Tewari, Mrs Prabha Rao and Mrs Motamma, from Karnataka.

Among the General Secretaries, apart from Mr Vora, those who have been inducted include Mrs Mohsina Kidwai and Mrs Prabha Rao. They come in place of Mr Dhawan, Mr Madhavrao Scindia and Mr Pranab Mukherjee. The last two named had to go keeping the party norm of one-man one-post. Mr Scindia is the party’s Deputy Leader in the Lok Sabha and Mr Mukherjee, the Chief Whip in the Rajya Sabha.

The Congress President reposed faith in Mr Ahmed Patel who continues to be the party treasurer in addition to his charge of Jammu and Kashmir.

Among the secretaries, the Congress chief dropped Mr Sudhir Sawant, Mrs Usha Meena and Dr S C Vats bringing in Mr Bansal, Mrs Chaudhary, Mr Pratap Bhanu Sharma, party spokesman Mr Ajit Jogi, Mr R D Pradhan and Mr Shiv Lal Valmiki.

Mr Bansal will have charge of Gujarat, Goa, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Delhi with Mrs Prabha Rao as the General Secretary in charge. Mrs Chaudhary will be Secretary in charge of frontal organisations with Mr Oscar Fernandes as the General Secretary.

Mr Ajit Jogi will be the Secretary in charge of the SC/ST and BC Department while Mr Pradhan who assisted the Congress President will continue to do so with an official rank as Secretary.

In the reallocation of work among AICC general secretaries, Ms Ambika Soni has been made in charge of the Congress President’s office and continues to retain the charge of the north-Eastern states.

While Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad will look after the party affairs in three southern states-Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka as also Pondicherry and Orissa, Ms Mohsina Kidwai will be in charge of Bihar, which was earlier entrusted to Mr Sushil Kumar Shinde. Mr Shinde retains the charge of Uttar Pradesh.

The reconstitution of the AICC secretariat and the CWC has come less than a month after the A.K. Antony Committee which went into the party’s worst debacle in the Lok Sabha poll submitted its report.

Mr Sonia Gandhi had then promised partymen that she would take expeditious action to make the party a stronger machine ahead of the crucial assembly elections in Orissa, Bihar, Manipur and Haryana.