Sonia to head Cong campaign panel for LS polls

Congress president Sonia Gandhi has been made the Chairperson of the party's 50-member Campaign Committee for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls in which Rahul Gandhi will be the Co-Chairman, the party announced on Tuesday night.

The announcement came less than a month after the Congress had said that Rahul, the party vice president, will lead its campaign in the upcoming general elections due in May.

The announcement regarding the posts to be held by Sonia and Rahul in the Committee was made in a statement released to the press by All India Congress Committee General Secretary Janardan Dwivedi.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be a member of the committee along with several union ministers.

"This meeting of the AICC declares that 2014 election campaign will be led by Rahul Gandhi," a meeting of the Congress Working Committee on January 16 this year had said.

This decision which laid to rest speculation on whether Rahul will be the made the Congress' prime ministerial candidate was incorporated in the omnibus draft resolution which later came up before the AICC meeting the next day for approval.

It was taken at the two-hour meeting of the extended CWC notwithstanding an overwhelming demand for anointing Rahul as the PM nominee ahead of the polls.

However, Congress leaders have also been maintaining thereafter that Rahul's position in the party is number two after Sonia and that the party will be led by the Congress President and the Congress Vice President in the next polls.

No chief minister, Pradesh Congress Committee chief or Congress Legislature Party leader figures in the committee.

Senior ministers A K Antony, P Chidambaram, Sushil Kumar Shinde, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Salman Khurshid, Kamal Nath, Anand Sharma and Jairam Ramesh; former Chief Ministers Sheila Dikshit and Ashok Gehlot and senior party leaders Ahmed Patel, Motilal Vora, Janardan Dwivedi, Madhusudan Mistri, Digvijay Singh, Ambika Soni and B K Hariprasad are among the members of the committee.

Union Ministers Jyotiraditya Scindia, V Narayanasamy, Jitender Singh, Rajeev Shukla, Manish Tewari and J D Seelam also figure in the list.