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Journalism of Courage
Pending Rahul and Priyanka’s decision to plunge into Elections 2004, Congress president Sonia Gandhi today turned to the party’s Generation Next — including half-dozen political scions — for giving a youthful touch to the party manifesto.
Speaking to journalists after her meeting with ‘‘youth leaders’’ this afternoon, Sonia said she was holding meetings with ‘‘several groups’’ as part of an exercise to prepare the party’s manifesto. She wished to know directly ‘‘what they want in the manifesto’’ and received a ‘‘lot of positive inputs’’, she said, without elaborating on the nature of inputs.
Of the 23 young men and women she met, six belonged to political families — Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot, Randeep Surjewala, Apok Jamir, Milind Deora and C.R. Keshavan (great grandson of C. Rajagopalachari). Natwar Singh’s son Jagat Singh and late Jitendra Prasad’s son Jatin Prasad were conspicuous by their absence.
Sonia indicated that no major revamp of the AICC set-up will take place on the eve of the Lok Sabha elections. ‘‘Thoda bahut to hoga, zyada nahi is samay (there will be some changes but nothing major at this point,’’ she said when asked about a possible organisational reshuffle.
Congress leaders later said the ‘‘minor reshuffle’’ may entail shifting out those AICC office-bearers who plan to contest the Lok Sabha elections. By that criterion, two general secretaries (Kamal Nath and Mukul Wasnik) and a number of secretaries are likely to be removed from the organisational set-up and ‘‘redeployed’’ in the election campaign.
