Top rebel Sachin Pilot, G23 leaders find place in rejigged Congress Working Committee

Aditi Tandon & Shubhadeep Choudhary

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 20

The Congress on Sunday unveiled an all-inclusive 84-member working committee, striking a balance between veteran and young leaders, inducting prominent rebel Sachin Pilot with an eye on the upcoming Rajasthan elections and according prominence to dissenting views by including some of the G23 leaders who had led a campaign for organisational revamp in the party urging the Gandhis to heed the call for reform.

Among the top new entrants to the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the first to be unveiled by Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, is Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor who was part of the G23 and had later unsuccessfully contested against Kharge in the October 2022 party presidential election.

Pilot’s induction is a move to balance the power equation in Rajasthan where he and CM Ashok Gehlot have long been at loggerheads, undermining party prospects in the upcoming state polls.

While veteran G23 leaders Anand Sharma and Mukul Wasnik have been retained among 39 regular CWC members (the two were also part of the 49-member steering committee that Kharge had announced in the interim after he became the party president), Tharoor and Pilot have been included in this key segment. Other G23 leaders Manish Tewari and Veerappa Moily have been picked among 18 permanent CWC invitees, alongside other new entrants — Himachal Congress chief and Mandi MP Pratibha Singh; senior leader Mohan Prakash; former leader of opposition in Kerala Assembly Ramesh Chennithala; Karnataka veteran BK Hariprasad; Rahul Gandhi’s close aides K Raju and Meenakshi Natarajan; MP Phulo Devi Netam and Kharge’s confidant Gurdeep Sappal, the original force behind Rajya Sabha TV.

Former Uttarakhand CM Harish Rawat, former union minister Pawan Bansal and Rajya Sabha MP Deepender Singh Hooda remain permanent invitees.

The new list features among regular members the entire Congress top brass —president Kharge; former PM Manmohan Singh; former Congress presidents Sonia and Rahul; Leader of Congress in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury; AICC general secretary Priyanka Vadra; former ministers Ambika Soni, AK Antony, P Chidambaram; communications general secretary Jairam Ramesh; AICC general secretaries Kumari Selja and Randeep Surjewala, among others.

Among important new inductions in the regular CWC member segment are former Maharashtra CM Ashok Chavan; former Punjab CM Charanjit Channi; N Raghuveera Reddy; senior OBC leader from poll-bound Chhattisgarh Tamradhwaj Sahu; senior Gujarat leader Jagdish Thakor; GA Mir from J&K; Deepa Dasmunshi from West Bengal; and MPs Gaurav Gogoi (Lok Sabha) and Syed Naseer Hussein (Rajya Sabha), among others.

Kanhaiya Kumar has been inducted in his capacity as AICC in-charge of the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI).

The list of nine special CWC invitees includes several young leaders — former HRD minister Pallam Raju, AICC media chief Pawan Khera, former Uttarakhand Congress chief Ganesh Godiyal, Lok Sabha MP K Suresh, Yashomati Thakur, Congress digital media chief Supriya Shrinate and spokesperson Alka Lamba, along with former union home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde’s daughter Priniti Shinde.

Prominent leaders who have been dropped are Raghuvir Singh Meena from Rajasthan; Dinesh Gundurao, KH Muniyappa and HK Patil from Karnataka (all currently state ministers in Karnataka); Congress deputy leader in Rajya Sabha Pramod Tiwari; PL Punia (from UP); and Raghu Sharma.

The new Congress Working Committee has 39 regular members (including four permanent members), 18 permanent invitees, 14 state in-charges, nine special invitees and four ex officio members. The previous CWC had 23 regular members. In today’s list, former presidents Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and leader of Congress in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury feature as permanent members to the CWC in line with the amendment to the party constitution approved in the Raipur AICC plenary.

Those picked from region

• Punjab: Ambika Soni, Charanjit Singh Channi (both regular members), Manish Tewari (permanent invitee), and Sukhjinder Randhawa (AICC in-charge Rajasthan)
• Haryana: Kumari Selja and Randeep Surjewala (both regular members); Deepender Hooda (permanent invitee)
• HIMACHAL PRADESH: Pratibha Singh (permanent invitee)
• Chandigarh: Pawan Bansal (permanent invitee)