Kharge Creates A Steering Group To Replace Congress’s Top Body, The CWC, Leaving No Room For Tharoor
The highest decision-making body of the party, the Congress Working Committee (CWC), was replaced by a 47-member Steering Committee on October 26 in Mallikarjun Kharge’s first organizational move as Congress president. This arrangement will last until a new CWC is formed.
Kharge’s opponent in the race for the Congress presidency, Shashi Tharoor, was not given a spot on the committee.
Although Tharoor won 1,072 votes compared to Kharge’s 7,897, his performance in the 1997 presidential election against a perceived establishment candidate who had the support of the Gandhi family was superior to that of party heavyweights Sharad Pawar and Rajesh Pilot.
In the tripartite election, which was until recently the last time a non-Gandhi was elected as Congress president, Pawar received 888 votes, Pilot received 354, and Sitaram Kesri received 6,224.
Given Tharoor’s performance and competitive attitude despite Kharge being an establishment candidate, it was anticipated that he would be given a key organizational position. In fact, once the election results were announced, Tharoor declared a desire to collaborate with Kharge for the benefit of the party.
Thiruvananthapuram’s Lok Sabha representative was a member of the G-23 opposition group, which wrote to Sonia Gandhi, the interim president at the time, requesting visible leadership.
Hooda & Tewari out, Anand Sharma accommodated
Only Anand Sharma and Mukul Wasnik, out of the G-23 members, have made it to the steering committee. Sharma remained a renegade until recently, although Wasnik had made peace with the Gandhis a while back. However, both had agreed to serve as Kharge’s nominees.
Former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who was also a member of the G-23, is a surprising exclusion. In Haryana, Hooda enjoys widespread support and wields significant influence within the party’s state committee. Prior to the organizational elections, Kharge’s son, Deepender Hooda, had organized a campaign for him. The panel has not yet seen either Hooda.
Similar to this, despite supporting Kharge over Tharoor in the presidential election, Manish Tewari and Prithviraj Chavan, both members of the dissident camp, failed to make it onto the committee.
After Kharge assumed leadership of the party on October 26, all CWC members handed in their resignations.
News Mania Desk
