Congress rejigs its core committees for 2019 polls

New Delhi: The Congress Party on Saturday revved up its poll-preparedness by making key appointments to its manifesto, coordination and publicity committees.

At a meeting of the party’s core vommittee this morning, Congress president Rahul Gandhi is also understood to have asked leaders to seek “real-time” view from the grassroots on important issues.

While former finance minister P. Chidamabaram has been appointed as the head of the manifesto committee, A.K. Antony would chair the coordination committee and Anand Sharma would be heading the Publicity Committee.

Jairam Ramesh would be the convenor of the coordination committee and Pawan Khera would be the convenor of the publicity committee and Rajiv Gowda, who heads the Party’s research cell, would be the convenor of the manifesto committee.

In separate meetings of the party’s manifesto committee and the publicity committee, it was also decided that the Congress would launch a webpage to seek suggestion from the masses as to what should be included in the poll Manifesto for the Lok Sabha elections as well as the upcoming state polls. This is part of the larger plan to get “real time” views from masses.

Sources said Mr Gandhi also asked leaders, specially members of the manifesto committee, to work on providing alternatives to people as far as policy issues which have been criticised by the Opposition are concerned.

Examples given by him include implementation of GST and petrol price hike.

The various committees which were formed with a view to strengthen the party organisation as well as shore up preparations ahead of the Lok Sabha polls has seen induction of quiet a few young and upcoming leaders but the reliance has been particularly on old guards like Ashok Gehlot, Mr Chidambaram and Ahmed Patel.
 
Mr Patel was also recently appointed as the treasurer of the Party replacing Motilal Vohra.

Some of the other members of the manifesto committee are Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Salman Khurshid, Shashi Tharoor, Kumari Selja, Sushmita Dev, Rajeev Gowda, Mukul Sangma, Manpreet Singh Badal, Sam Pitroda and Sachin Rao. The publicity committee includes Randeep Surjewala, Manish Tiwari, Pramod Tiwari, Rajeev Shukla, Bhakta Charan Das, Praveen Chakravarty, Milind Deora, Ketkar Kumar, Pawan Khera, V.D. Satheesan, Jaiveer Shergill and Divya Spandana.

There have been regular meetings of the various committees formed by Mr Gandhi even during the period of his absence when he undertook a pilgrimage to the Kailash Mansarovar.