New Delhi: Ahead of Lok Sabha elections, Congress on Thursday night carried out a major organizational reshuffle bringing senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad back as party general secretary and given charge of four states changing the work allocation of almost all other general secretaries.
Azad, former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister who has had one of the longest tenure in the Congress Working Committee, was given charge of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Orissa.
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 be contesting 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, Gandhi 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 Commitee 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.
Margaret Alva, who has resigned as general secretary, was made a member of the screening committees of Sikkim, Mizoram and Meghalaya. The committees in all the three states are headed by Union Minister Vyalar Ravi.
The screening committee also has AICC general secretary incharge of state, PCC chief and CLP leader as its members.
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