Congress names new working committee; Mistry replaces Digvijay as in charge of UP Ahead of its reshuffle of the Union Cabinet on Monday, the Congress party has announced a new working committee with 21 members; 12 General Secretaries and 42 Secretaries in AICC; Madhusudan Mistry replaces Digvijay Singh as in charge of UP. Apart from party president Sonia Gandhi, Prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and Defence Minister A K Antony, Ahmed Patel are among the members of the re-constituted working committee. Party general secretary Janardhan Dwivedi announced this at a press conference in New Delhi. Oscar Fernandes, Vilas Muttamwar, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Birender Singh dropped as general secretaries. Ahmed Patel will contiune as Political Secretary to Sonia Gandhi, while Ambika Soni will be General Secretary in charge of her office. Ajay Maken will be new media in-charge of congress. After leading party towards victory in Karnataka, Madhusudan Mistry is rewarded and he made in charge of UP while C P Joshi has given the charge of Bihar. Ambika Soni, Shakeel Ahmed and Gurudas Kamat made new AICC General Secretaries. Both Joshi and Maken had handed over their resignations last Saturday. Their resignations were on Sunday accepted by President Pranab Mukherjee with immediate effect, a Rashtrapati Bhawan communique said. The reshuffle will take place on Monday 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. "Whatever new role the party assigns me I will perform that to the best of my ability," Joshi tweeted. Maken, who was Minister for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, has expressed his desire to work for the party. His resignation comes ahead of Assembly elections in Delhi later this year. 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 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.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 03:23:06 +0000
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