New Delhi: Almost 10 months after his election as the party president, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge Sunday reconstituted the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s top decision-making body.
What is arguably the largest CWC ever — comprising a total of 84 members — however, failed to meet the ‘50-under-50’ criteria that was delineated first at the Congress’s Udaipur Chintan Shivir last year and then again in the party’s plenary session held in Raipur earlier this year.
At both these events, the Congress had announced that 50 percent of the permanent members in the new CWC will be under the age of 50. While it has young members, only three leaders under the age of 50 years — Sachin Pilot, Gaurav Gogoi and Kamleshwar Patel — were accommodated as permanent members in the CWC.
The party shared the list of appointees on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
The Congress President Shri @kharge has constituted the Congress Working Committee.
Here is the list: pic.twitter.com/dwPdbtxvY5
— Congress (@INCIndia) August 20, 2023
The newly-reconstituted CWC suggests a clear imprint of the Gandhi family, with most of their old loyalists retaining their places in the party’s apex decision-making body even as there seems to be an attempt to placate disgruntled leaders such as Shashi Tharoor, Sachin Pilot and Manish Tiwari, who is a permanent invitee.
Tharoor had unsuccessfully challenged Kharge in the party’s presidential election. The Thiruvananthapuram MP, part of the erstwhile G-23 group of rebel leaders, has been facing resistance and non-cooperation from some factional leaders in Kerala.
From the G-23, which had, in 2020, demanded elections to various party bodies to revitalise the Congress, Kharge has nominated Tharoor, Tewari, Mukul Wasnik and Anand Sharma as permanent members to the apex body.
Former student leader Kanhaiya Kumar also made it to the list of permanent invitees as the Congress’ general secretary in-charge its student wing, the National Students’ Union of India. Former Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi, who had gone incommunicado for months after losing from two assembly constituencies in the last elections, has made it to the CWC as a permanent member.
Pilot’s inclusion in the CWC is being seen as a move to placate the young leader ahead of polls in Rajasthan later this year. Inclusion of leaders like Tamradhwaj Sahu, a strong factional leader in Chhattisgarh, also suggests that the party has kept an eye on the coming state polls.
Apart from these permanent members, 18 permanent invitees, 14 state and four organizational in-charges and nine special invitees were also made a part of the new CWC.
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Who’s in, who’s out
After the party’s plenary session in Raipur earlier this year, it had announced that the CWC will be expanded from 23 to 35 permanent members. However, in the list of new CWC members released Sunday, the body was further extended the limit to accommodate 39 permanent members.
At the plenary, the party had also announced that the new CWC will have horizontal reservation for leaders from scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, other backward classes, minority communities, as well as women. That criterion has been met in the new list with 20 of the 39 belonging to marginalised categories.
The list of permanent members shows the inclusion of leaders from both the Gandhi and Kharge camps.
Rahul Gandhi loyalists Jitendra Singh, Randeep Surjewala and K.C. Venugopal have been retained, as have been old-timers such as Ambika Soni who is considered to be loyal to Sonia Gandhi. Another Rahul Gandhi loyalist, Minakshi Natarajan, has been included as a permanent invitee. Rajya Sabha MP and from Kharge’s team, Syed Nasir Hussain, has also been made a permanent member.
Meanwhile new entrants in the core CWC include N. Raghuveera Reddy, Tamradhwaj Sahu, Jagdish Thakore, Ghulam Ahmed Mir, Deepa Dasmunsi and Mahendrajeet Singh Malviya.
There are also many who were a part of the last CWC, and the interim steering committee formed later, but did not make it to the new CWC.
These include K.H. Muniyappa, P.L. Punia, Pramod Tiwari, Rajani Patil, Raghu Sharma and Dinesh Gundu Rao.
New, young leadership has been included in the list under the special invitees category. Those in this category include Alka Lamba, Pawan Khera, Supriya Shrinate, Praniti Shinde and Vamshi Chand Reddy.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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