The new Congress Working Committee a laboured attempt by the party president to send a message about the balance of youth & experience ahead of 2019.
New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi sent out three messages in reconstituting the party’s apex decision-making body, the Congress Working Committee (CWC), Tuesday evening: No place for veterans such as Digvijaya Singh, Janardan Dwivedi, and Oscar Fernandes in his scheme of things, lack of confidence in the party’s legal luminaries when the BJP-led executive is at loggerheads with the judiciary, and admission of the party’s political irrelevance in Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana, among other states.
The new CWC otherwise reflected a laboured attempt by the Congress president to send out a message about the need to blend youth and experience. While he accommodated some of his mother and predecessor Sonia Gandhi’s trusted aides as members, he also brought in his own confidants — Jitendra Singh and K.C. Venugopal — as members, and young leaders such as Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Pasada, Gaurav Gogoi, and RPN Singh as invitees.
Given that the youngest members of the CWC, which includes three octogenarians (Manmohan Singh, Motilal Vora and Tarun Gogoi), are in their late 40s, and the young invitees are mostly scions of smaller political dynasties, the changes hardly bring any fresh whiff of air and look rather cosmetic. The inclusion of politically non-performing assets such as Vora, Mukul Wasnik, and Anand Sharma, among many others, in the CWC left many wondering about Gandhi’s political priorities.
None of the law ministers during the UPA government — Veerappa Moily, Ashwani Kumar, Salman Khurshid or Kapil Sibal — found place in the Rahul-led CWC. Nor did the party’s other legal eagles, such as Manish Tewari and Abhishek Manu Singhvi, make the cut.
P. Chidambaram, an accomplished lawyer, did find a place — though as a permanent invitee and not a full-fledged member — but it was in his capacity as a former finance minister who has been aggressively targeting the government’s economic policies.
Though these legal luminaries were not part of the CWC in the past, most of them were in the government then. They were expected to find prominent places in Rahul’s team, especially when the party’s apex decision-making body may be required to take calls on crucial legal-political issues in the coming weeks and months.
Incidentally, Chidambaram also happened to be the only former home minister of the UPA era to get a foothold in the CWC. Sushil Kumar Shinde and Shivraj Patil, former home ministers, couldn’t.
The newly reconstituted committee has no representation from Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, the states where the Congress is on the political margins. This reflects the party’s readiness to ride piggyback on regional outfits. R.C. Khuntia from Odisha does find a place as a permanent invitee, but that’s because of his capacity as the party’s in-charge for Telangana.
The big miss
Arguably, the biggest message of Tuesday’s exercise was Rahul’s unequivocal message to many party veterans, such as former chief ministers Digvijaya Singh (Madhya Pradesh), Bhupinder Singh Hooda (Haryana), Virbhadra Singh (Himachal Pradesh), and Prithviraj Chavan (Maharashtra), who have all been left out of the CWC.
The messages to Hooda and Virbhadra Singh were made louder by the inclusion of their detractors. Kumari Selja, a Hooda detractor, was appointed a CWC member, while former Haryana CM Bhajan Lal’s son Kuldeep Bishnoi, who had quit the party following differences with Hooda and returned only last year, was made a special invitee. Anand Sharma, a Virbhadra Singh detractor, has been appointed a member of the committee as well.
Hooda may, however, also see a silver lining here, as many contenders for chief ministerial posts — Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath and his Rajasthan counterpart Sachin Pilot — have been kept out of the CWC.
The most surprising omission from the list was former MP chief minister and state coordination committee chief Digvijaya Singh, who was earlier divested of his charge as AICC general secretary in charge of Goa, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana. He has already ruled out playing any role in the state and his party has no role for him at the centre now.
“I am working in Madhya Pradesh. Rahul Gandhi is my leader. He has picked up his own team,” Digvijaya told ThePrint Wednesday morning.
“I have enough talent to find something to do after the assembly elections,” he added.
There were a few signals to poll-bound states as well: OBC leader Tamradhwaj Sahu, involved in the Ramayan Katha in Chhattisgarh, and Meena leader from Rajasthan, Raghuveer Meena. Tariqed Karra, who recently quit the Jammu & Kashmir PDP to join the Congress, has been made a permanent invitee.
If the reconstituted CWC was expected to be the guiding force of the party ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Tuesday’s list gave no indication of any such vision or direction.