With an eye on the Assembly elections in four Congress-ruled states this year, followed by general elections in 2004, Congress president Sonia Gandhi reconstituted the AICC today. Ambika Soni, considered Gandhi’s closest confidante, lost the post of political secretary and the charge of Kerala which saw an embarrassing crisis last month.Soni, however, is the only one with the charge of two important election-going states, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. The fact that Soni is in charge of the Congress president’s office, affairs of Jammu and Kashmir and the media shows that the exercise was not to alienate Soni but to shift the focus from her.Soni was also relieved of the charge of Chattisgarh, which has gone to a new entrant, former chief minister of Maharasthra Vilasrao Deshmukh, who is now in the crucial Congress Working Committee (CWC).Ahmed Patel retains his position as the political secretary, will look after Kerala affairs and be in charge of Delhi in the election year. Having just one political secretary may not be seen as leading to a power centre, because of the relatively low profile of Patel.Gandhi is said to have waited for the blue-print of the BJP plans for the election states to emerge from the meeting of the national executive in Indore last month before starting work on her new team.Now every CWC member has a specific responsibility of states, which points towards a full-scale preparation for the general elections. Another significant new entrant is Jyotiradiya Scindia as a member of the party Economic Affairs Department. Keeping a balance between the new and old leaders, Gandhi has brought in senior leaders R.K. Dhawan as general secretary in charge of Bihar and Jharkhand, and Nawal Kishore Sharma as general secretary in charge of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. Meira Kumar, daughter of the late Jagjivan Ram, has also been brought into the CWC.The All India Congress Committee would now have a Department of Kashmir Affairs headed by Manmohan Singh and Karan Singh, Arjun Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, M.L. Fotedar, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Saifuddin Soz, K.K. Tewari, J.N. Dixit, Ahmed Patel and Ambika Soni as members.Azad continues as the president of the Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee. As a CWC member, he would be in charge of Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal.The Political Affairs Committee has been constituted with Sonia Gandhi as chairperson. The members include Manmohan Singh, Shivraj Patel, Pranab Mukherjee, Arjun Singh, Natwar Singh, Karan Singh, Buta Singh and Priyaranjan Dasmunshi.Seperate departments have been made out for Scheduled Castes, headed by Hemanand Biswas and for Scheduled Tribes, headed by G. Venkataswamy. The Minority Department would be headed by C.K. Jaffer Sharief.Kamal Nath seems to have paid for Gujarat, as he was taken off Delhi and sent to states that do not face elections soon, Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, West Bengal and Orissa. For winning Himachal Pradesh, state in-charge Mohsina Kidwai has been given Punjab, Chandigarh and Assam.
