From CK Nayak
NEW DELHI: The three vital committees set up by AICC chief Rahul Gandhi on Saturday with eye on the 2019 Lok Sabha election have poor representation from the North East.
Barring Mukul Sangma, former Meghalaya chief minister, and Sushmita Dev, Mahila Congress president, there are none from the six other northeastern states. The Congress has lost power in all but one (Mizoram) states.
Both Sangma and Dev are part of the 19-member Manifesto Committee, the largest among the three, Congress General Secretary Ashok Gehlot said on Saturday.
The nine-member Core Committee and the 13-member Publicity Committee do not have any member from the northeastern states.
All the committees are a blend of old and young faces.
The Core Committee will have senior leaders AK Antony, Ghulam Nabi Azad, P Chidambaram, Gehlot, Mallikarjun Kharge, Ahmed Patel, Jairam Ramesh, Randeep Singh Surjewala and KC Venugopal. All of them barring Ramesh, known as the party’s election strategist, are members of the Congress Working Committee.
The Manifesto Committee will have 19 members, besides Sangma and Dev. Both Ramesh and Chidambaram are members of this panel too.
Besides, Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Badal, Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor, Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Gowda, technocrat Sam Pitroda, economist Bhalchandra Mungekar and former minister Salman Khurshid are members of the committee.
Apart from media in-charge Surjewala, social media head Dvya Spandana, Rajya Sabha MP Kumar Ketkar, former Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tiwari and spokespersons Pawan Khera, Rajeev Shukla and former minister Milind Deora are members of the Publicity Committee.
Gehlot said with the constitution of the committees, “the party will be in election mode and start putting up a manifesto and drawing strategy for publicity and coordination”.