Gandhi siblings, two G-23 leaders on top Congress panels

Tribune News Service

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, May 24

Gandhi siblings and loyalists dominate two of the three panels Congress president Sonia Gandhi formed on Tuesday to give shape to the Udaipur Declaration, the party adopted nine days ago to prepare for the upcoming state and 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Prashant Kishor’s ex-aide in advisory group

• Sonia Gandhi has formed political affairs group, task force 2024 and central planning group
• Rahul and Priyanka named in first two panels, respectively
• G-23’s Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma are part of political affairs group
• Poll strategist Kishor’s ex-aide Sunil Kanugolu is among task force members

The two committees, political affairs group and task force 2024, are part of Sonia’s closing remarks at the Udaipur Chintan Shivir where she had urged “extraordinary” reforms to address the prevailing “extraordinary” circumstances.

Sonia will head the political affairs group, which has among members only one Lok Sabha MP Rahul Gandhi alongside sitting and former Rajya Sabha members Mallikarjun Kharge, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Ambika Soni, Digvijay Singh, Anand Sharma, KC Venugopal and Jitendra Singh.

G-23’s Azad and Anand Sharma have found place in the group drawn from the Congress Working Committee, but as clarified by Sonia earlier the group will have an advisory role and the collective decision-making powers will continue to vest in the CWC. The new group dominated by Sonia loyalists is a compromise between her and G-23, which had demanded reconstitution of the central parliamentary body, a CWC sub-group enshrined in the Congress constitution, but long defunct.

Task force 2024, expected to be the primary mover of the Congress election management strategy, has eight members, not one among them a sitting Lok Sabha MP. The members include incumbent or past Rajya Sabha members and two former MLAs apart from poll strategist Prashant Kishor’s former aide Sunil Kanugolu, who was involved in the BJP’s 2017 UP elections.

Besides Kanugolu, the panel consists of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, P Chidambaram, Jairam Ramesh, Mukul Wasnik, KC Venugopal, Ajay Maken and Randeep Surjewala.

The party said each member of the task force would be assigned specific tasks related to organisation, communications and media, outreach, finance and election management and will have designated teams to be notified subsequently.

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