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Sonia revamps Congress

Congress president Sonia Gandhi has made major organisational changes and reconstituted the Congress Working Committee to ''strengthen the party machinery and make it more effective and vibrant''.

The reorganisation follows the recommendations of the A K Antony committee which had gone into the causes of the party's debacle in the last Lok Sabha elections.

Senior leaders Pranab Mukherjee, Madhavrao Scindia and R K Dhawan have been divested of their positions as Congress general secretaries. However, they would continue to be members of the CWC.

Motilal Vora, Natwar Singh, N D Tiwari, Motamma and Prabha Rao have been inducted into the CWC.

Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker P M Sayeed has been made one of the three special invitees to the CWC, besides Bhajan Lal and Madhavsinh Solanki.

The general secretaries are Ambika Soni, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mohsina Kidwai, Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Prabha Rao and Sushil Kumar Shinde. Ahmed Patel will continue to be the treasurer of the party.

Among those who have been dropped from the CWC are Lakshmi Devi and Gangadevi Potai.

The CWC members are Ahmed Patel, Arjun Singh, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Jitendra Prasad, Madhavrao Scindia, Pranab Mukherjee, R K Dhawan, K Vijayabhaskar Reddy, A K Antony, Manmohan Singh, Motilal Vora, Natwar Singh, N D Tiwari, Oscar Fernandes, Rajesh Pilot, Sushil Kumar Shinde, Ambika Soni, Meira Kumar, Mohsina Kidwai, Mottamma and Prabha Rao besides party president Sonia Gandhi.

Sitaram Kesri, K Karunakaran and S C Jamir will be the permanent invitees.

AICC general secretary Ambika Soni will continue to look after Assam, Arunchal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura and the Congress president's office. Mukul Wasnik will assist her as Congress secretary.

Gulam Nabi Azad will be in charge of Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry Kerala, Karnataka and Orissa. Anil Sastri will assist him as Congress secretary.

Kidwai will look after Bihar and will be assisted by Pratap Bhanu Sharma.

Motilal Vora has been given the charge of Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Himchal Pradesh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. V Narayanaswamy will be the Congress secretary in charge of these states.

Oscar Fernandes will continue to handle CWC meetings, Congress sessions, organisational election work, departments and cells. Selja will be assist him.

Prabha Rao will be in charge of Gujarat, Goa, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Delhi. Pawan Bansal will be the secretary.

Uttar Pradesh will be looked after by Shinde with assistance from Ramesh Chennitala.

Ahmed Patel will look after office administration and Jammu and Kashmir. Santosh Choudhry will assist him in handling frontal organisations.

Mani Shankar Aiyar will be the Congress secretary with independent charge of Lakshadweep, Daman and Diu, Dadra Nagar Haveli, Andaman and Nicobar, panchayati raj and nagarpalika departments.

Imran Kidwai will handle the minorities department which was earlier under Arjun Singh.

Party spokesperson Ajit Jogi has been made Congress secretary in charge of scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward castes department.

As for the other new secretaries, Janardhan Dwivedi will be attached to the Congress president's office and R D Pradhan will be in charge of her office. He will also coordinate Congress committees.

UNI

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