Hyderabad: Not even a single leader from the Telangana Congress found a place in the newly formed Congress Working Committee’s ‘general members’ list that was announced by the party on Sunday, August 20.
But, former deputy chief minister of the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh Damodar Raja Narasimha was inducted in the ‘permanent invitees’ list.
Also from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, state Congress chief N Raghuveera Reddy is the only one to make the cut.
With Telangana going to the polls at the end of this year, the move to not induct even a single leader in the CWC is raising eyebrows on the party’s strategy in the state.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge reconstituted the party’s top decision-making body with 39 general members, 32 permanent invitees, including some in-charges of state, and 13 special invitees, including presidents of the Youth Congress, the National Students’ Union of India, the Mahila Congress and the Seva Dal as ex-officio members.
Shashi Tharoor, Anand Sharma, and Mukul Wasnik, who were part of the group of 23 leaders that had raised questions about the party’s leadership under Sonia Gandhi, are among the general members of the new CWC. Manish Tewari and Veerappa Moily, who were also part of the grouping, have been made permanent invitees.
Former Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi and Pratibha Singh have also been included in the important panel, according to a Congress statement.
Sachin Pilot, who rebelled against the party’s government in Rajasthan and was later removed as deputy chief minister, is also among the new CWC members.
The CWC was formed months after Kharge became the party president on October 10 last year and replaces the Steering Committee that was formed as a stop-gap arrangement.
The general members of the CWC are Mallikarjun Kharge, Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, A K Antony, Ambika Soni, Meira Kumar, Digvijaya Singh, P Chidambaram, Tariq Anwar, Lal Thanhawala, Mukul Wasnik, Anand Sharma, Adhokrao Chavan, Ajay Maken, Charanjit Singh Channi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and Kumari Selja, the statement said.
Gaikhangam, N Raghuveera Reddy, Shashi Tharoor, Tamradhwaj Sahu, Abhishek Singhvi, Salman Khurshid, Jairam Ramesh, Jitendra Singh, Randeep Surjewala, Sachin Pilot, Deepak Babaria, Jagdish Thakore, G S Mir, Avinash Pande, Deepa Das Munshi, Mahendrajeet Singh Malviya, Gourav Gogoi, Syed Naseer Hussain, Kamaleshwar Patel and K C Venugopal are also members.
(With excerpts from PTI)
