Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Oct 26: After taking over as the new Congress president, Mallikarjun Kharge today set up a 47-member Steering Committee that includes former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the party’s ex-presidents Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and senior leader from J&K, Tariq Hamid Karra.
The Steering Committee 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, who 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.
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.
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.
The steering committee members include Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, A K Antony, Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Ajay Maken, Ambika Soni, Anand Sharma, Avinash Pande, Gaikhangam, Harish Rawat, Jairam Ramesh, Jitendra Singh, Kumari Selja, K C Venugopal, Lalthanhawla, Mukul Wasnik, Oommen Chandy, P Chidambaram, Randeep S Surjewala, Raghubeer Meena, Tariq Anwar, Dr A Chella Kumar, Devendra Yadav, Digvijaya Singh, Dr Ajoy Kumar, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Bhakta Charan Das, Dinesh Gundu Rao, Harish Chaudhary, H K Patil, Jai Prakash Agarwal, K H Muniyappa, B Manickam Tagore, Manish Chatrath, Meira Kumar, P L Punia, Pawan Kumar Bansal, Pramod Tiwari, Rajani Patil, Dr Raghu Sharma, Rajeev Shukla, Salman Khurshid, Shaktisinh Gohil and T Subbirami Reddy.
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