Mallikarjun Kharge forms 47-member Steering Committee, retains most from CWC

New Delhi: New Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday set up a 47-member Steering Committee that includes former prime minister Manmohan Singh and the party's ex-presidents Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. The interim panel headed by him would take the place of the Congress Working Committee, the apex decision-making body, till a new CWC is formed after Kharge's election is ratified at the party plenary. All members and permanent invitees of the last CWC have been retained in the committee except Vivek Bansal.

Bansal, a former MLA who was a permanent invitee in the previous CWC, is now the in-charge for Haryana affairs of the party. None of the special invitees to the previous CWC under Sonia Gandhi have found a place in the new Steering Committee announced by Kharge hours after he took over as the new party Congress president. Shashi Tharoor, who contested against Kharge, is not among the panel members. He was earlier heading the Professional Congress wing of the party but resigned ahead of the party's presidential election. The CWC special invitees not included in the new panel are Ajay Kumar Lallu, Chinta Mohan, Deepender Singh Hooda, and Sachin Rao, besides Seva Dal chief organiser Lalji Desai, IYC chief Srinivas B V, NSUI chief Neeraj Kundan, Mahila Congress chief Netta D'Souza and president of Intuc G Sanjeeva Reddy.

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Anand Sharma, a CWC member and a prominent leader of the G23 dissident group that was pushing for organisational overhaul, has been retained in the Steering Committee. Earlier in the day, soon after Kharge took over as the new chief, all CWC members and office bearers of the party tendered their resignations to the new party chief to enable him to choose his own team. There is a tradition of all office bearers of the Congress resigning soon after the election of the new president. "All the CWC members, AICC general secretaries and in-charges have tendered their resignation to Congress president," said AICC general secretary Organisation KC Venugopal.

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