Major reshuffle in Cong, Azad is back

Senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad was on Thursday brought back as Congress general secretary, V Kishore Chandra Deo dropped from the post and Karnataka leader Mallikarjun Kharge inducted into Congress Working Committee in a major reshuffle of AICC as party chief Sonia Gandhi readied her "war team" ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

Sonia gave Azad the charge of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Orissa and Puducherry and retained M Veerappa Moily in charge of Andhra Pradesh and Assam while Digvijay Singh in charge of Uttar Pradesh.

In the reconstituted AICC, youth leader Rahul Gandhi continued with his charge of Youth Congress and National Students Union of India.

Mohsina Kidwai, the only woman general secretary, has been given the charge of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Chandigarh, Lakshadweep and Mahila Congress while Mukul Wasnik will be in-charge of party affairs in Delhi, Rajasthan and
also Sewa Dal.

Prithviraj Chavan will continue to be AICC general secretary in-charge of Jammu and Kashmir. In addition, he has been made the party in-charge of Haryana.

Janardan Dwivedi will continue to look after organisation. He also gets new charges like organizational election, training and programme co-ordination.

B K Hariprasad will be the new party in-charge of Madhya Pradesh. He will continue to look after his assignment
of Gujarat.

Dropped as party in-charges are Ajay Maken, who was looking after Jharkhand and Orissa, Arun Kumar, in charge of Tamil Nadu, and Kishore Chandra Deo who was in charge of programme monitoring.

Deo, Kumar and Maken will contest Lok Sabha polls and AICC sources made it clear that their responsibilities have been to enable them to focus on polls.

Deo, however, was retained as a member of CWC. Former chief ministers Vilasrao Deshmukh of Maharashtra
and Luizinho Faleiro of Goa and former Andhra Pradesh PCC chief K Keshav Rao have been made permanent invitees to CWC.

The newly constituted AICC has as many as 38 secretaries, apart from 9 general secretaries. There are 22 members in CWC and 17 permanent invitees and 4 special invitees in CWC.

 Motilal Vora continues to be the treasurer but gets another responsibilty as party in-charge of administration.

V Narayansamy will continue to be the AICC general secretary in-charge of Chhattisgarh along with Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Tripura.

A K Antony remains in-charge of Maharashtra where Sharad Pawar-led NCP is posing problems in seat-sharing talks.

Senior leader R K Dhawan has been made in-charge of Uttarakhand while Oscar Fernandes will be in-charge of AICC
meetings and sessions.

With not much time at hand, Sonia also constituted the Screening Committees of all the states to select the party candidates for the Lok Sabha elections.

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee will be the Chairman of the Screening Committee of Andhra Pradesh and Assam.

Former home minister Shivraj Patil will be the chairman of the Screening Committee of Arunachal Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Nagaland and Tripura.

Senior leader Janardhana Poojary will be the Screening Committee Chairman  of Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

Satyavrat Chaturvedi, who was dropped as AICC spokesman last month in the wake of his remarks against SP leader Amar Singh, continues to be a permanent invitee to CWC and has also been made head of the Departments and Cells of AICC apart from being in-charge of the Screening Committee for Delhi.

Maken was made a member of the Screening Committee for Bihar and Uttar Pradesh headed by Union Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde.

Arun Kumar, in-charge of Tamil Nadu, is also not in the list of new in-charges of states.