Congress recasts departments

Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Thursday appointed technocrats Sam Pitroda and M Rajeev Gowda as chairpersons of the Overseas and the Research departments of the party, respectively.

Sonia also renamed the Scheduled Tribes Department as the Adivasi Congress and appointed former Union minister V Kishore Chandra Deo as its chairperson. The Congress also created a new Fishermen department and named T N Prathapan its chairperson.

Deo will be assisted by five vice chairpersons — Mahendrajeet Singh Malviya, Shyam Sunder Hansdah, Bellaih Naik, Manoj Mandavi and Atuwa Munda, AICC general secretary (Organisation) Janardan Dwivedi announced in a statement released here on Thursday.

The Research Department to be chaired by Gowda,  a former professor at the IIM-Bengaluru and a Rajya Sabha member, subsumes three other departments — Research and Reference ,Research and Coordination and the Department of Policy and Planning and Coordination.