Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday constituted Congress Working Committee (CWC) with 51 new and old members. The new CWC will have 23 members, 19 permanent invitees and 9 special invitees. According to agency sources, the CWC will include a blend of young and old leaders.
In an attempt to give impetus to Congress' crumbling hold on state-level politics across India, the party president has mended the old Congress ways and okayed the induction of state incharges as permanent invitees of the CWC.
Independent in-charges appointed for various states will be among the permanent invitees to the working committee as ex-officio members, while the heads of five frontal organisations of the party - INTUC, Sewa Dal, Youth Congress, Mahila Congress and NSUI - will be part of the special invitees, a PTI report said.
According to reports, party veterans Digvijay Singh, Janardan Dwivedi, Kamal Nath, Sushilkumar Shinde, Mohan Prakash, C P Joshi have been dropped from CWC, while Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Motilal Vora, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mallikarjun Kharge, AK Antony, Ahmed Patel and Ambika Soni continue to hold their membership.
Permanent invitees to CWC include Sheila Dikshit, P Chidambaram, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Balasaheb Thorat and Tariq Hameed Karra. Former chief ministers Ashok Gehlot, Oomen Chandy, Tarun Gogoi, Siddharamaiah, Harish Rawat have also been included in new CWC.
The first meeting of the new CWC will be held on July 22. This the first CWC formed by the Congress chief after assuming charge of the party.
The committee was dissolved prior to the election of the Congress president and the earlier panel was transformed into a steering committee till the party's plenary session that concluded in March.
The CWC, which acts as an advisory panel on all key decisions of the party, was not in place since the plenary session in March.
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