Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi will lead the
party’s campaign in the next 2014 general elections. Rahul will head a
high-power five-man Election Co-ordination Committee to “oversee all party
activities related to the next elections,” a senior functionary informed.
This committee, along with three sub-groups — on pre-poll
alliances, the manifesto and government programmes, and communications and
publicity — general secretary Janardan Dwivedi said, was constituted by
Congress president Sonia Gandhi following the announcement she made on November
9 at the Samvad Baithak at Surajkund. “With a year and half left for the Lok
Sabha elections,” Sonia Gandhi said on that occasion, “both party and
government will have to work cohesively together to ensure that we secure a
renewed mandate.” In keeping with that assurance, of the 27 persons drafted for
pre-election work, 11 are Central ministers.
While the activities listed are not unusual, this is the
first time the tasks have been given “institutional shape.” From managing the
youth wings, Rahul Gandhi
will move to a more central task in the organisation as it heads into what is
one of the toughest elections the grand old party has ever faced in its
history. An effort has been made to give the party’s core team for the next
elections a younger look: even then, only six of the 27 are below 50.
The other members of the Election Coordination Committee,
which has already had one sitting, are Ms. Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed
Patel, party general secretaries Janardan Dwivedi, Digvijay Singh and
Madhusudan Mistry, and Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh. Defence
Minister A.K. Antony heads the sub-groups on pre-poll alliances and manifesto
and government programmes, while Mr. Digvijay Singh heads the communications
and publicity sub-group.
Mr. Antony’s colleagues in the pre-poll alliances sub-group
are Petroleum Minister M. Veerappa Moily, MoS Jitendra Singh, party general
secretary Mukul Wasnik, and party functionaries Suresh Pachauri and Mohan
Prakash. The manifesto and government programmes sub-group is the largest:
apart from Mr. Antony, Union Ministers P. Chidambaram, Sushil Kumar Shinde,
Anand Sharma and Salman Khurshid, party spokespersons Sandeep Dikshit and Renuka
Chowdhury, party functionary Ajit Jogi, chairman of the SC Commission P.L.
Punia are members. Lastly, those in the communications sub-group, headed by Mr.
Digvijay Singh, are senior party leader Ambika Soni, MoSs Manish Tewari,
Jyotiraditya Scindia and Rajeev Shukla, and MPs Deependra Hooda and Bhakta
Charan Das.
This article
is posted by pressbrief.in
