NL Correspondent
Srinagar, July 18
In a first, the Congress Party has picked a senior politician from Kashmir as a permanent invitee to the powerful Congress Working Committee.
The 51 member CWC is the highest body in the grand old party entrusted to take important organizational decisions.
Sources in the party told that former Parliamentarian Tariq Hameed Karra has been nominated as the permanent invitee to CWC, making him first ever Congress leader from Kashmir and second in Jammu and Kashmir State to make it to the prestigious decision making body of the Congress.
None other than the senior leader and incumbent leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha Gh.Nabi Azad has ever made it to CWC from J&K in the entire history of the Congress party.
Congress President Rahul Gandhi, former Party President Sonia Gandhi, former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, Gh Nabi Azad are among the 23 members of the re-constituted CWC whereas apart from Tariq Hameed Karra, Former Home and Finance Minster P. Chidambaram, and former Delhi Chief Minster Sheila Dikshit are among the 18 congress leaders in the country who have been made permanent Invitees to CWC. Ten leaders had been inducted in the decision making body as special invitees.
Meanwhile many state Congress leaders have congratulated Karra for his induction in the CWC and have appreciated the party high command for the decision. They said Karra deserved the honour and hoped his induction in the CWC would boost the moral of the state Congress leaders.
It is to mention here that prominent among those dropped from the previous CWC include Digvijay Singh, Janardan Dwivedi, Kamal Nath and Sushil Kumar Shinde.
Sources told that the first meeting of the new CWC the party's highest decision-making body will be held on July 22.
The new faces at the central level in the CWC include former chief ministers Oommen Chandy (Kerala), Tarun Gogoi (Assam), Siddaramaiah (Karnataka) and Harish Rawat (Uttarakhand).
Sources said that United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be the senior members of the new CWC that will form the core team of the party for the state elections this year and the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The leaders who have been retained include Ghulam Nabi Azad, Ahmed Patel, Mallikarjun Kharge, Ashok Gehlot, Moti Lal Vora, A.K. Antony, Amika Soni, Anand Sharma, Mukul Wasnik, Avinash Pande, K.C. Venugopal and Dipak Babaria.
The CWC was announced four months after the All India Congress Committee (AICC) plenary session in March ratified the election of Rahul Gandhi as party chief and authorized him to reconstitute the party's top decision-making body.
