NEW DELHI, DEC 23: As part of organisational revamp in the wake of A K Antony Committee report, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Thursday dropped R K Dhawan and relieved Madhavrao Scindia and Pranab Mukherjee as AICC general secretaries while inducting senior leaders Motilal Vora, Mohsina Kidwai and Prabha Rau in their place.Sonia also reconstituted the party's working committee by sacking tribal leader from Madhya Pradesh Ganga Potai and Lakshmi Devi from Andhra Pradesh and bringing in Vora, Prabha Rau, N D Tewari, Natwar Singh and Motamma as new members.Senior leader Arjun Singh was replaced as chairman of the minorities department by AICC secretary Imran Kidwai, who has been entrusted independent charge of the department.Similarly, Meira Kumar, former MP, was removed as chairperson of the SC, ST and Backward Castes department.Ajit Jogi, who was appointed secretary of the AICC today, has been put in charge of ST, ST and BC department.While retaining all the eight elected members of the CWC,Sonia also dropped V N Gadgil, who had demanded that the party change its thinking on concepts like secularism and socialism, as a permanent invitee from the working committee.Former Haryana chief minister Bhajan Lal and Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker P M Sayeed have been inducted into the working committee.The announcement was made by AICC general secretary Oscar Fernandes, who continues to be in charge of CWC in the reconstitution.He said that Scindia and Mukherjee had requested Sonia to be relieved as general secretaries so as to enable them concentrate on work as deputy leader in Lok Sabha and chief whip in Rajya Sabha respectively. Scindia, Mukherjee as also Dhawan are elected members of the CWC.In the reallocation of work among AICC general secretaries, Ambika Soni has been made in charge of Congress president's office and continues to retain the charge of the North-Eastern states.While Ghulam Nabi Azad will look after the party affairs in three southern states Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnatakaas also Pondicherry and Orissa, Mohsina Kidwai will be in charge of Bihar, which was earlier entrusted to Sushilkumar Shinde. Shinde retains the charge of Uttar Pradesh.Motilal Vora has been assigned Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.Prabha Rau, who is a former Maharashtra PCC president, has been asked to handle party work in Gujarat, Goa, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Delhi.
