New Delhi, June 16: After a skewed representation of states and castes in the Union cabinet, the Congress is reportedly working towards a balanced reshuffle in the AICC.
While Team Manmohan had only a token representation of Congress’s young faces, the AICC is expected to have a stamp of the party’s poster boy Rahul Gandhi.
Congress sources said while Rahul is eyeing meatier posts for close aides Jitendra Singh and Meenakshi Natarajan (both secretaries in the AICC), he also wants well-defined roles for Sandeep Dikshit, Ashok Tanwar, Priya Dutt, Mausam Noor and Pradeep Majhi. But there is a hitch.
Though Rahul will make a strong bid for youth representation in the AICC, the young parliamentarians will not be able to openly demand their induction into the big league of AICC functionaries.
“Days after the election results, we were told (by Rahul) not to eye ministerial berths. Building the organisation across the country, especially in states where we didn’t fare well, is our priority. Now that the process (of cabinet formation) is over, we hope to get a defined role in the organisation. But we can only wait for the final announcements.
Declaring ambitions openly does not go down well here,” a young party MP said.
If the party adopts the principle of one-person-one-post as is being speculated, it may create several vacancies in the AICC because many senior office bearers have been inducted into the council of ministers. If the party sticks to the rule, it will have to find replacements for leaders like Ghulam Nabi Azad, Prithviraj Chavan, Jairam Ramesh, Mukul Wasnik, Veerappa Moily and V Narayansamy.
Congress sources said the difficult task at hand was to maintain a fine balance between experienced people and the youth brigade. “There are several seniors who have been inducted into the cabinet. Some of them had been the party’s troubleshooters and with provincial elections scheduled in Maharashtra and Bihar, the party will require them,” a Congress leader said.
Congress sources pointed out that the reshuffle wouldn’t be an easy task. Senior leaders who were left out of the cabinet will now want to be accommodated in the AICC. Then there are Margaret Alva, Shakeel Ahmed and Mani Shankar Aiyar who lost the election. It is expected that the three would be accommodated in the AICC along with Oscar Fernandes who was excluded from the cabinet this time.
With the terms of nearly 13 governors ending in December, Congress president Sonia Gandhi would extend gubernatorial posts to party veterans who were denied ministerial berths. Among the leaders expected to be offered the governor’s office are Arjun Singh, Sisram Ola, Hansraj Bhardwaj and Shivraj Patil.
However, a senior AICC functionary said the veterans may not agree to “quietly retire to some Raj Bhavan”.
–Agencies