Sachin Pilot and Shashi Tharoor were on Sunday nominated to the Congress Working Committee (CWC) in a cautious exercise indicating the top leadership’s reluctance to undertake a drastic overhaul months before the next general election.
While Tharoor’s induction reflects the grace and maturity of party president Mallikarjun Kharge and the Gandhi family as he had alleged systemic infirmities and lack of fairness in the presidential polls, Pilot’s rise also underscores the space for dissent in the party.
By nominating these two leaders to its highest decision-making body, the party has also demonstrated respect for talent.
Among the other new entrants to the CWC are former chief ministers Ashok Chavan and Charanjit Singh Channi, Gujarat veteran Jagdish Thakor, former MP from Bengal Deepa Dasmunshi, Rajasthan minister Mahendrajit Singh Malviya, Karnataka Rajya Sabha MP Nasser Hussain, Madhya Pradesh MLA Kamleshwar Patel and Andhra Pradesh MLA N. Raghuveera Reddy.
The dominant opinion in the party about the overall changes appeared to be negative, as both young and older leaders felt this was not the best team Kharge could have constituted. The reluctance to remove veterans who are not active in politics is being resented, and there are complaints that the exercise smacks of favouritism, networking and status quo.
Leaders like Manmohan Singh, A.K. Antony, Ambika Soni and Meira Kumar are unable to play active roles in politics because of their health issues and old age. All of them remain regular CWC members. The tradition is that veterans are made permanent invitees to the CWC.
Some leaders like Harish Rawat, Veerappa Moily, Subbirami Reddy and Pawan Bansal have been made special invitees.
But the inclusion of Manish Tewari, Ramesh Chennithala and Deepender Hooda in this category is being questioned, with the argument that they should have walked into the CWC straight on the basis of talent, experience and contribution to the party.
One former MP reacted angrily: “The leadership has obviously not learnt lessons from its mistakes. Rahul Gandhi’s stature and charisma have risen very high in the last few months but the lobbyists haven’t stopped playing their destructive games.”
The team looks impressive otherwise, with leaders who have enormous talent and experience, including Sonia Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, Digvijaya Singh,P. Chidambaram, Anand Sharma, Salman Khurshid, K.C. Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh, Abhishek Singhvi, Randeep Surjewala, Ajay Maken, Tariq Anwar, Adhir Chowdhury, Sashi Tharoor and Sachin Pilot. But these faces do not signify a political renaissance. Their dominance also appears to reflect a crisis of new talent.
Those who will be part of the CWC in their capacity as in-charge of states are Chella Kumar, Bhakta Charan Das, Ajoy Kumar, Harish Chowdhary, Rajeev Shukla, Manickam Tagore, RajniPatil, Kanhaiya Kumar, Gurdeep Sappal, Sachin Rao, Devender Yadav and Manish Chatrath.
The third category of special invitees includes Pallam Raju, Pawan Khera, Supriya Shrinate, Praniti Shinde, Alka Lamba and Vamshi Chand Reddy. Heads of frontal organisations B.V. Srinivas, Neeraj Kundan, Netta D’Souza and Lalji Desai will also be ex-offcio members.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Lal Thanhawla, Mukul Wasnik, Kumari Selja, Gaikhangam, Tamradhwaj Sahu, Jitendra Singh, Deepak Babaria, G.A. Mir, Avinash Pande and Gaurav Gogoi have been retained as regular members.
Other leaders among the permanent invitees are Mohan Prakash, B.K. Hariprasad, Pratibha Singh, Tariq Hameed Karra, K. Raju, Girish Roychowdhary, Chandrakant Handore, Meenakshi Natrajan, Phulo Devi Netam, Damodar Raja Narasima and Sudeep Roy Burman.
