Maken, Joshi new Gen Secys; Azad, Charak dropped, Mohan elevated

*Reshuffle in Union Cabinet today

NEW DELHI, June 16: Constituting Rahul Gandhi’s team for the 2014 Lok Sabha battle, Congress today brought in former Union Ministers Ajay Maken and C P Joshi along with Ambika Soni and Gurudas Kamat as General Secretaries and dropped Ghulam Nabi Azad and Oscar Fernandes.
Making largescale changes in the organisation, Congress President Sonia Gandhi retained Ahmed Patel as her Political Secretary but significantly made Ambika Soni as General Secretary incharge of the Congress President’s Office (CPO).
Soni was the Political Secretary before Patel replaced her nearly a decade ago. Soni had also held the charge of CPO earlier.
Madhusudan Mistri, who hails from Gujarat and is considered close to Rahul, got the charge of key Uttar Pradesh with Digvijay Singh being given the responsibility of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Goa.
Other General Secretaries who were dropped included Vilas Muttamwar and Birender Singh. Among the incharges of various States who failed to get renomination were Jagmeet Singh Brar, Jagdish Tytler and Gulchain Singh Charak.
Those who have been elevated as General Secretaries include Mohan Prakash, Shakeel Ahmed and Luizinho Faleiro who were earlier Permanent Invitees to Congress Working Committee (CWC) and incharge of various States.
With Lok Sabha polls less than a year away, Maken has been entrusted with the newly-created Communication, Publicity and Publication wing which will now include the Media Department of the party. The Media Department was being handled for the last six years by Janardan Dwivedi.
Priya Dutt will be assisting Maken as Secretary with the party appointing as many as 42 secretaries. Maken and Joshi had resigned as Union Ministers last night.
A senior leader remarked that the changes in the organisation showed that this a new generation takeover as the average age of the apex policy making body of the party, the CWC, is now 52 while it was much more earlier.
Rahul, who took over as party Vice President in January this year, has kept to himself the charge of front organisations with Prabha Kishor Taviad and Suraj Hegde set to help him as Secretaries.
C P Joshi has been entrusted with party affairs in Assam, Bihar, West Bengal and Andaman and Nicobar Islands, while another former Union Minister Gurudas Kamat will look after Gujarat, Rajasthan, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Daman and Diu.
Besides CPO, Ambika Soni gets Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand.
Party general secretary Janardan Dwivedi made the announcement about changes in the AICC secretariat ahead of a Cabinet reshuffle.
Faleiro has been made in charge of six northeastern states except Assam, while Mukul Wasnik, who had been in charge of Rajasthan for a record eight years, is now heading South looking after Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Pudducherry and Lakshyadweep.
Hari Prasad retains the charge of poll-bound Chhattisgarh and also gets Jharkhand and Orissa. Mohan Prakash retains Maharashtra as General Secretary and has also been given poll-bound Madhya Pradesh earlier with Hari Prasad.
Shakeel Ahmed is General Secretary in charge of Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Chandigarh.
This is perhaps for the first time that the party has as many as 12 General Secretaries.
Party veteran Moti Lal Vora has been retained as the Treasurer and also in charge administration.
Significantly, former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and Union minister Beni Prasad Verma, a known detractor of SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, and former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi have been made permanent invitees to the CWC.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram continues as Permanent Invitee, so also former ministers Murli Deora and S M Krishna.
Anil Shastri, Raj Babbar, Rashid Masood, Mohinder Singh Kaypee and G Sanjeeva Reddy have been made Special Invitees to the CWC.
Dwivedi will now look after AICC meetings, AICC Departments, CWC, Organisation as also Co-ordination.
With Azad no longer General Secretary, Digvijay Singh will have to handle the tricky issue of Telangana being in charge of Andhra Pradesh.
Dwivedi said that Azad has not found a place as General Secretary and Joshi and Maken have now only become General Secretaries as the party in its chintan shivir in Jaipur had decided that a person should either be in the Government or the party.
Senior leader Mohsina Kidwai has just been made permanent member of the CWC as she wrote to the Congress President suggesting that she should be given light work due to her advancing age.
Besides the Congress President, Vice President and the Prime Minister, other members of the CWC are A K Antony, Ahmed Patel, Hema Prova Saikia, Sushila Tiriya and all party General Secretaries and the Treasurer.
The new Secretaries include Geetashree Oraon, Mainul Haque, Sanjay Kapoor, Subhankar Sarkar, Paresh Dhanani, A Chella Kumar, Thiruvanakassar, Ashwanti Sekhri, Sajjan Kumar Verma, Bhupen Kumar Borah, Naseeb Singhm, Prakash Singh, Rana Goswami and Zuber Khan.
Congress also announced the screening committees for poll bound Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Rajasthan. While Joshi has been made the Chairman for the Chhattisgarh committee, Union Minister V Narainswamy heads it in Delhi. Mistry is the Chairman in Madhya Pradesh, Ajay Maken is in Rajasthan and Mohan Prakash in Mizoram.
Meanwhile, the much talked about reshuffle of the Union Cabinet will take place tomorrow, ahead of which C P Joshi and Ajay Maken stepped down as Cabinet ministers.
Both Joshi and Maken had handed over their resignations last night. Their resignations were today accepted by President Pranab Mukherjee with immediate effect, a Rashtrapati Bhawan communique said.
The reshuffle will take place tomorrow evening, a Rashtrapati Bhawan spokesperson said.
Joshi, who was holding dual portfolios of Surface Transport and Highways and Railways, resigned following “directives” from the Congress high command, sources close to him said.
The reshuffle of the Council of Ministers is expected to be the last one in UPA-II with Lok Sabha elections less than a year away. This is the second reshuffle since October last year.
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh is expected to utilise the opportunity to fill several vacancies in his Council of Ministers.
Singh had earlier said that there were some vacancies and the issue of filling them up was being considered.
The latest vacancies in the Council of Ministers were created by the resignations of Union Ministers P K Bansal and Ashwani Kumar.
Bansal quit as the Railways Minister last month in the wake of bribery scandal involving his nephew and a Railway Board member.
Kumar resigned as the Law Minister following a controversy over vetting of a CBI probe report on coal blocks allocation scam.
The Railway portfolio was given to Joshi as an additional charge while that of Law went to Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal also as an additional ministry.
In the reshuffle, ministers holding two portfolios could be divested of one, sources said.
With DMK and TMC withdrawing support to the UPA Government, a number of slots vacated by them are yet to filled up.
Five ministers of DMK had resigned on March 20, this year after which there has been no rejig in the Union Council of Ministers.
They were Ministers of State for Finance, Commerce and Industry, Health and Family Welfare and Social Justice. The only Cabinet minister the party had was M K Alagiri who was in-charge of Chemicals and Fertilisers.
Two cabinet ministers of DMK had resigned earlier — Dayanidhi Maran and A Raja, the latter following the 2G spectrum allocation scam.
Trinamool Congress had withdrawn support to the Government last year.(PTI)