In Congress Central Election Committee rejig, Kharge drops veterans, gives state faces a leg-up

The CEC is headed by the Congress president, which selects the party’s candidates for the Lok Sabha and the Assembly elections.

The members of the previous CEC were former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi, Antony, Ambika Soni, Girija Vyas, Dwivedi, Moily, Mukul Wasnik and Mohsina Kidwai besides general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal.

All of them barring the Gandhis, Soni and Venugopal have been dropped from the new CEC.

The new members of the 16-member CEC include Congress leader in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Salman Khurshid, Madhusudan Mistry, N Uttam Kumar Reddy, Chhattisgarh Deputy Chief Minister T S Singh Deo, Karnataka minister K J George, ex-Uttarakhand Congress chief Pritam Singh, Kishanganj MP Mohammad Jawed, Rajya Sabha MP Amee Yajnik, P L Punia and Madhya Pradesh MLA Omkar Markam.

Their induction is a major elevation for Congress leaders like Reddy, Deo, George, Singh, Jawed, Yajnik and Markam, who will now be at the party high table as members of the high-powered panel. Mistry was the head of the Congress Central Election Authority, which conducted the party’s presidential elections last year. Punia was till recently the AICC in-charge of Chhattisgarh.

Earlier on Monday, the Congress leadership sent a signal that it was preparing to wage an aggressive campaign for the Telangana Assembly elections, announcing that Hyderabad will be the venue of the first meeting of the rejigged CWC on September 16-17. This will be followed by a rally, where the party will kickstart the campaign announcing five big election promises, which it calls “guarantees”.

The Congress believes that the two-day CWC session, followed by a rally and an “innovative yatra” to Telangana’s all 119 Assembly constituencies, would set the tempo for the party’s campaign. The idea behind the three-day blitz is to set a narrative that the party is taking the Telangana polls seriously and will make every effort to unseat the K Chandrashekar Rao-led BRS government.

The Congress leaders from the state had been talking about “positive” internal survey results to project a narrative that the party was gaining ground against the ruling BRS and an aggressive BJP.

Venugopal said the CWC will meet on September 16 followed by a meeting of the extended CWC – which would include the party’s CMs, CLP leaders and state unit chiefs – the next day.

On September 17, which is celebrated as the Telangana National Integration Day, the Congress will hold a rally in Hyderabad, where it will announce five poll guarantees. After the rally, Kharge will “flag off the cavalcade for all CWC members, invitees, PCC chiefs and CLP leaders to visit each of the 119 Assembly constituencies of Telangana”, Venugopal said.

He said all the leaders, barring the MPs who have to rush to Delhi to attend the special session of Parliament, will hold workers’ meetings and participate in door-to-door distribution of a “charge sheet” against the BRS government. “After lunch, they will interact with local influencers. The event will culminate with a march to a prominent statue of Mahatma Gandhi, B R Ambedkar or Komaram Bheem in the constituency,” he said.