Daijiworld Media Network - New Delhi (SP)
New Delhi, Aug 26: National president of Congress party, Rahul Gandhi, who has already begun groundwork for the next year's Lok Sabha (LS) election, has formed core group committee for the purpose. Mallikarjun Kharge happens to be the lone representative from Karnataka to get picked for this committee.
Core committee is expected to work like a mini Congress working committee. Among other things, it will deliberate and decide on alliances to be struck and understandings to be reached, in a bid to force BJP to bite the dust.
At the same time, Rajeev Gowda from the state has been chosen for the manifesto committee, while Ramya is a part of the campaign committee.
Mallikarjun Kharge
Surprisingly, Rahul, who has been advocating that young blood should be infused into the top rung of the party, has given prominence to the old guard. Sonia loyalists like A K Antony, Ashok Gehlot, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mallikarjun Kharge, Ahmed Patel and Jairam Ramesh, who have almost always played important roles since long, are part of the said committee.
In the three teams, Randeep Surjewala and K C Venugopal, who are perceived to be Rahul loyalists, have also got memberships. Chidambaram and Jairam Ramesh have been given spots in two teams each. Randeep Surjewala has memberships of both the core group and campaign committee.
The core group committee has nine members. Manifesto committee has 19 members while the campaign committee has 13. These committees will begin work for the Lok Sabha election now onward, Ashok Gehlot stated.
Members of the committees are as follows:
Core group committee
A K Antony, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Chidambaram, Ashok Gehlot, Mallikarjun Kharge, Ahmed Patel, Jairam Ramesh, Randeep Surjewala and KC Venugopal.
Manifesto committee
Manpreet Badal, Chidambaram, Sushmita Dev, Rajeev Gowda, Bhupendra Singh Hooda, Jairam Ramesh, Salman Khurshid, Bindu Krishnan, Kumari Selja, Raghuveer Meena, Prof Balachandra Mungekar, Meenakshi Natarajan, Rajani Patel, Sam Pitroda, Sachin Rao, Tamradhwaj Sahu, Mukul Sangma, Shashi Tharoor and Lalitesh Tripathi.
Campaign committee
Charandas Bhakta, Praveen Chakravarty, Milind Deora, Kumar Ketkar, Pawan Khera, V D Satishan, Anand Sharma, Jaiveer Shergil,Rajeev Shukla, Ramya, Randeep Surjewala, Manish Tiwary and Pramod Tiwary.
Several leaders from the state like Siddaramaiah have been disappointed to not get memberships of any of the committees. Other than Kharge, Jairam Ramesh is the only leader from the state to be considered for these committees. Not only Siddaramaiah, surprisingly, senior leaders like Veerappa Moily, K H Muniyappa, B K Hariprasad etc too have been kept out of the committees.
Apparently the party has taken care to give balanced representation to different states based on its geographical presence and social composition.