Veterans dominate Rahul's CWC; Siddaramaiah onboard

Veterans dominated the Congress Working Committee constituted by AICC President Rahul Gandhi with former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah being made a member.

AICC General Secretary in-charge of Karnataka K C Venugopal and former union minister Kumari Selja – both 55 years old – are the youngest members of the CWC, after 48-year-old Congress President Rahul Gandhi.

Former Congress President Sonia Gandhi, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, senior leaders A K Antony, Motilal Vora, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mallikarjun Kharge, Ahmed Patel, and Ambika Sonia have retained their place in the party's top decision-making body.

The first meeting of the newly constituted CWC is expected to be held on Sunday.

Prominent among those dropped from the CWC include senior leaders Digvijaya Singh, Kamal Nath, Janardan Dwivedi, Sushilkumar Shinde, Mohan Prakash, Oscar Fernandes, Madhusudan Mistry, C P Joshi, B K Hariprasad.

Besides Siddaramaiah, the new entrants include former chief ministers Tarun Gogoi, Oommen Chandy, Harish Rawat, senior leaders Tamradhwaj Sahu, Raghuveer Meena, Anand Sharma, G Gaikhangam, Dipak Babaria and Avinash Pande.

The 89-year-old AICC Treasurer Vora is the senior-most member of the CWC followed by Manmohan Singh (85), Tarun Gogoi (83), Antony (77), Soni and Kharge (both 75), Chandy (74) and Sonia Gandhi (71).

The CWC has 23 members, 18 Permanent Invitees and 10 Special Invitees. All the AICC in-charges of states – which mostly comprise young leaders – have been made permanent invitees to the CWC.

Interestingly, key states of Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where the Congress desperately needs to put its house in order, have no representation on the CWC.

Those in

Also, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and prominent Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh and Kapil Sibal too have not found a place in the CWC.

The Permanent Invitees include former union ministers P Chidambaram, Sheila Dikshit and Jyotiraditya Scindia. Prominent Maharashtra leader Balasaheb Thorat and veteran Kashmiri leader Tariq Hameed Karra, who recently quit the PDP to join the Congress, have also been included.

Among the special invitees to the CWC are K H Muniyappa, Arun Yadav, Deepender Hooda, Jitin Prasada, Kuldeep Vishnoi and chiefs of the frontal organisations of the Congress.