20 August, New Delhi: The Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s top decision making body, was finally formed on Sunday after months of speculation. Its members include prominent figures like as Shashi Tharoor, Sachin Pilot, Priyanka Gandhi, and others.
Pilot’s nomination comes in the last few months before vital assembly elections in Rajasthan.
There are 39 regular members of the panel, plus an additional 13 invited guests, some of whom hold high governmental positions. Included as ex-officio members are the presidents of the Youth Congress, National Students’ Union of India, Mahila Congress, and Seva Dal.
Leaders like Pilot, K. Patel, and Gaurav Gogoi have succeeded even with the stricter criteria of the 50% under 50 formula.
In the same formula, we also have Supriya Shrinate, Alka Lamba, Deepender Hooda, Priniti Shinde, Yashomati Thakur, Jothimani, and others.
The party said in a statement that “Congress President has constituted the CWC.”
Veteran party leaders A.K. Antony, Ambika Soni, Meira Kumar, Digvijay Singh, P. Chidambaram, Tariq Anwar, Mukul Wasnik, Anand Sharma, Kumari Selja, Randeep Singh Surjewala, and Ajay Maken have also been named, along with former party chiefs Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh.
Pilot, Tharoor, Priyanka Gandhi, and ex-Chief Minister of Punjab Charanjit Singh Channi are among the new CWC’s signatories.
Party leaders such as Jairam Ramesh, Jitendra Singh, Deepak Babaria, Jagdish Thakor, GA Mir, Avinash Pande, Deepa Das Munshi, Mahendrajeet Singh Malviya, Gogoi, Syed Naseer Hussain, Kamaleshwar Patel, and KC Venugopal are among the 39 members of the CWC.
The party has also extended permanent invitations to B.K. Hariprasad, Prathiba Singh, Manish Tewari, Tariq Hameed Karra, Deepender Singh Hooda, Girish Raya Chodankar, T. Subbarami Reddy, K. Raju, Chandrakant Handore, Meenakshi Natarajan, Phulo Devi Netam, Damodar Raja Narasimha, and Sudeep Roy Burman.
Pallam Raju, Khera, Ganesh Godkhal, Kodikkunil Suresh, Yashomati Thakur, Shrinate, Shinde, Lamba, and Vamshi Chand Reddy are among those who have been sent invitations to the celebration.
Others who are in control of their respective states include A Chellakumar, Bhakta Charan Das, Ajoy Kumar, Harish Choudhary, Rajeev Shukla, Manickam Tagore, Sukhvinder Randhawa, Manickrao Thakre, Rajani Patel, Kanhaiya Kumar, Gurdeep Sappal, Sachin Rao, Devender Yadav, and Manish Chatrath.
Ten months after Kharge took office as Congress president in October 2017, the new CWC was named.
Notably, Tharoor, a new member of the CWC, ran against Kharge for the party’s presidency.
The addition of Pilot to the 39-person panel has been seen as an effort to appease the popular politician before the Rajasthan elections.
Deputy Chief Minister Pilot was dismissed along with the rest of the Rajasthan Congress leadership in 2020 after he launched a rebellion against the Ashok Gehlot administration.
Meanwhile, Deepa Das Munshi and Syed Naseer Hussain have joined the panel as newcomers.
Das Munshi is the widow of the late Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, a renowned Congress politician and Union Minister from West Bengal, and a member of Parliament herself.
