Congress party president Mallikarjun Kharge has constituted a 16-member Central Election Committee in which he has dropped the names of several veteran leaders of the party including Manmohan Singh. Kharge recast the CEC on Monday, inducting various leaders and removing senior leaders like former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and other veterans like A K Antony, Janardan Dwivedi, and M Veerappa Moily.
CEC is headed by the Congress President who selects the party’s candidates for the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.
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According to a release by the All India Congress Committee (AICC), the committee includes Mallikarjun Kharge, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Ambika Soni, Adhir Rajan Chowdhary, Salman Khurshid, Madhusudan Mistry, N Uttam Kumar Reddy, TS Singh Deo, KJ George, Pritam Singh, Mohammad Jawed, Amee Yajnik, PL Punia, Omkar Markam, KC Venugopal.
Among the new faces, new questions have been set up from each state, former Uttarakhand Congress chief Pritam Singh, from West Bengal Adhir Rajan Chowdhary, Bihar MP Mohammed Jawed and Rajya Sabha MP from Gujarat Amee Yajnik, besides former MP from Uttar Pradesh PL Punia and General Secretary of Madhya Pradesh Congress, Former Member of Rajya Sabha Madhusudan Mistry, and Lok Sabha MP from Telangana Uttam Kumar Reddy have also been included as members of the all-important panel.
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Chhattisgarh Deputy Chief Minister T S Singh Deo, and former Union minister Salman Khurshid who has been given weightage, besides Karnataka minister KJ George, are also members of the key panel.
The development comes ahead of key Assembly elections in states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh.
The Assembly polls in five states– Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, and Mizoram are slated this year.
Also read: Congress chief Kharge convenes meeting of newly constituted CWC on 16 September in Hyderabad
The first meeting of the newly-constituted Congress Working Committee under party chief Mallikarjun Kharge will be held in Hyderabad on September 16 and will be followed by an election rally near the state capital the next day in poll-bound Telangana.
On September 18, apart from sitting MPs, all leaders will hold a ‘Karyakarta meeting’ and go door-to-door to spread awareness on the five guarantees and the “charge sheet” against the BRS government.
The meeting will discuss the political situation in the country and review the party’s poll preparedness in five states where elections are due this year. A political resolution will also be passed at the meeting.
The CWC is the top decision-making body of the Congress, and Kharge had reconstituted it in August, 10 months after he took charge as the Congress president.
Assembly elections in Telangana are slated later this year and the Congress is pulling all stops to wrest power from the ruling BRS. The K Chandrasekhar Rao-led BRS has been in power for the last almost 10 years and is facing a challenge from both Congress and BJP.
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Updated: 05 Sep 2023, 10:12 AM IST
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