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After ensuring his stamp over the Cabinet reshuffle, All India Congress Committee General Secretary Rahul Gandhi is all set to play a larger role in the party organisation.
In fact, the buzz is that Rahul Gandhi may be officially crowned “number two” in the party soon. The AICC reshuffle is slated to take place before Diwali on November 13.
There are reports that Rahul Gandhi will choose from the posts of working president, vice-president or secretary-general.
In the 1980s, Uttar Pradesh leader Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna was briefly the secretary-general of the party, while veteran freedom fighter Kamlapati Tripathi was its working president under the then party president Indira Gandhi. Former Madhya Pradesh Congress leader Arjun Singh had served as party vice-president when Rajiv Gandhi was at its helm.
Several young Congress MPs and Youth Congress office-bearers, groomed by the Gandhi scion, are also slated to get new party responsibilities after the AICC reshuffle. AICC secretaries and MPs, Ashok Tanwar and Meenakshi Natarajan, may be given crucial responsibilities.
Tanwar’s name is being considered for the post of the Haryana Congress president. Natarajan, sources indicated, may be made an AICC general secretary in charge of the National Students Union of India and Youth Congress.
Karnataka Youth Congress chief, Krishna Byre Gowda; Lok Sabha MPs Jyoti Mirdha, Manick Tagore, Deepender Hooda and Harish Choudhary are also expected to get bigger party assignments.
Senior leaders Ambika Soni, S.M. Krishna and Mukul Wasnik, who resigned from the Cabinet, are likely to be offered party posts. Soni is likely to come back to 24 Akbar Road as a party general secretary.
Elections to the Karnataka Assembly are scheduled for next year, and the Congress is likely to make use of Krishna’s experience to take on the first BJP Government in South India. With about eight States going to polls in 2013 and the general elections due in 2014, the Congress leadership is making every effort to get an image makeover.
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