The names included in the new working committee of the Congress have the potential to win the party re-election.

Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge has announced the Congress Working Committee ten months after taking over as the National President. 39 members have been made in the new working committee yesterday. At the same time, 32 people have been made permanent invitees and 13 people have been made special invitees. In which the heads of the four forward organizations of Congress, Youth Congress, NSUI, Mahila Congress and Seva Dal have also been included. In this way, a total of 84 leaders have been added to the Congress Working Committee. Where senior leaders have been given importance in the working committee, a large number of new people have also been included.

Keeping in mind the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, efforts have been made to help everyone through the working committee. The working committee included Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, AK Anthony, Ambika Soni, Meira Kumar, Digvijay Singh, Salman Khurshid, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Mukul Wasnik, Anand Sharma, Ajay Maken, Jairam Ramesh, Bhanwar Jitendra Singh and Old people like Tariq Anwar have been given place. At the same time, new people like Sachin Pilot, Deepak Bawaria, Jagdish Thakor, Ghulam Ahmed Mir, Avinash Pandey, Deepdas Munshi, Gaurav Gogoi, Kamleshwar Patel, Syed Nasir Hussain, Mahendrajit Singh Malviya have also been included.

Congress General Secretary Mukul Wasnik, Kumari Selja, former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, former Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi have been included as prominent Dalit faces in the working committee. Whereas Salman Khurshid, Tariq Anwar, Ghulam Ahmed Mir, Syed Nasir Hussain are representing the Muslim community. Smt. Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, Ambika Soni, Meera Kumar, Kumari Selja, Deepa Das Munshi have been included in the new working committee in the working committee. While Pratibha Singh, Meenakshi Natarajan, Phoolon Devi Netam and Rajni Patel are permanent invitees and Yashomati Thakur, Supriya Shrinet, Parineeti Shinde and Alka Lamba are included as special invitees in the working committee. Mahila Congress chief Netta D’Souza has been inducted as an ex-officio member. In this way, 15 women leaders have got a place in the executive body of 84 members.

Anand Sharma, Shashi Tharoor, Manish Tiwari and many such G-23 leaders have also found a place in the newly constituted working committee of the Congress, who were angry with many decisions of the Congress high command. This has given a message to the party workers that the party is trying to take everyone along. Even if a party leader is angry with any decision of the party, he will remain in the mainstream of the party. The four chief ministers of the party have been kept out of the Congress Working Committee. While Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot is the senior most leader of the party and last year his name was fixed for the national president of the party. This is the first time that the Chief Ministers have not been included in the working committee.

The Congress had decided in its Chintan Shivir held in Udaipur and in its general convention in Raipur that leaders below 50 years of age would be made office-bearers for half of the posts at all levels in the party organization. But the number of senior leaders is more in the current working committee. Nevertheless, the party has made a successful attempt to bring forward new leadership by inducting a large number of new people into the working committee for the first time.

Nine MPs from Lok Sabha and 14 MPs from Rajya Sabha have also been included in the newly constituted working committee. From the Lok Sabha, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhary, Shashi Tharoor and Gaurav Gogoi have been made members of the Congress Working Committee. Pratibha Singh, Manish Tiwari have been made permanent invitees and K Suresh and Manickam Tagore have been made special invitees. On the other hand, party president Malikarjun Kharge, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Digvijay Singh, P Chidambaram, Mukul Wasnik, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Jairam Ramesh, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Syed Nasir Hussain, KC Venugopal have been made members of the working committee from Rajya Sabha. Deepender Singh Hooda, Phoolon Devi Netam, Rajni Patel permanent invitees and Rajeev Shukla have been made special invitees.

Leaders below the age of 50 in the working committee include Sachin Pilot, 46, Gaurav Gogoi, 43, and Kamleshwar Patel, 49. The permanent invitees are Manickam Tagore, 48, Deepender Hooda, 45, Meenakshi Natarajan, 50, and Kanhaiya Kumar, 36. Among the special invitees are former Maharashtra minister Yashomati Thakur, 49, head of the party’s social media department, Supriya Shrinate, 46, former Maharashtra chief minister Sushil Kumar Shinde’s MLA daughter Parineeti Shinde, 42, former Delhi MLA Alka Lamba, 47, Youth Congress President Srinivas Bibi is 41 years old, Mahila Congress President Netta D’Souza is 48 years old and NSUI President Neeraj Kundan is 33 years old. Former Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi and Sachin Pilot from Rajasthan have been included in the working committee due to their proximity to Rahul Gandhi. Charanjit Singh Channi in Punjab and Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan will play a big role in the coming times.

Congress had realized its political power by forming the government with a huge majority in the assembly elections held in Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh a few months ago. The BJP government was running in Karnataka and Himachal. After defeating which the Congress formed the government. By the end of this year, elections to Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Mizoram and Jammu and Kashmir assemblies are to be held. Before the Lok Sabha elections, the results of the assembly elections of these states will have a profound impact on the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Congress is trying to form its own government again in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh where its party is in power before the Lok Sabha elections. In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP brought down the Congress government by changing the party. The party should be strengthened by forming the government of the Congress party there again. The Congress party is making all out efforts to regain its lost base in Telangana as well. Many big leaders of opposition parties have taken membership of Congress there in the past.

The entire attention of the Congress party is focused on the next Lok Sabha elections. Big leaders of Congress want to unite the recently formed All India Alliance and fight the next Lok Sabha elections so that BJP can be removed from power at the Center. The Congress high command is trying to normalize its political relations with all the parties involved in the All India Alliance so that in the future elections only one candidate can be fielded against the BJP by sharing the seats with mutual consent. The full emphasis of the national leadership of the Congress is on strengthening the opposition unity. There is a possibility of getting the benefit of which they will get in the coming elections.

Ramesh Saraf Dhamora

(The author is a freelance journalist accredited by the Government of Rajasthan. His articles continue to be published in many newspapers of the country.)