NEW DELHI, DECEMBER 23: In the much talked about reconstitution of AICC secretariat, Congress president Sonia Gandhi today dropped R K Dhawan as general secretary, accepted requests by Madhavrao Scindia and Pranab Mukherjee to be relieved from the post and inducted Motilal Vora, Mohsina Kidwai and Prabha Rao to replace them.Gandhi who also reconstituted the Congress Working Committee retained all the eight elected members but sacked Ganga Potai from Madhya Pradesh and Lakshmi Devi from Andhra Pradesh and brought in Vora, Rao, N D Tiwari, Natwar Singh and Motamma as new members.Former All India Congress Committee spokesman V N Gadgil was dropped as special invitee to the CWC while Bhajan Lal and deputy speaker P M Sayeed have been inducted.In the reshuffle of AICC secretaries, party spokesman Ajit Jogi, R D Pradhan, Santosh Chowdhury, Pawan Bansal and Shiv Lal Valmiki were brought in taking the total number of AICC secretaries to 14.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 Gandhi to be relieved as general secretaries so as to enable them to 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 Karnataka as 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 Rao, who is a former Maharashtra PCC president, has been asked to handle party work in Gujarat, Goa, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Delhi.The reconstitution of the AICC secretariat and the CWC has come less than a month after the A K Antony committee which went into the party's worst debacle in the Lok Sabha polls submitted its report.Gandhi had then promised partymen that she would take expeditious action to make the party a stronger machine ahead of the crucial assembly elections in Orissa, Bihar, Manipur and Haryana.
