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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  Rahul Gandhi to lead revamp of Congress top brass, to push for younger leaders
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Rahul Gandhi to lead revamp of Congress top brass, to push for younger leaders

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi will handpick the party national secretaries, who will be given independent charge of one state

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi.Premium
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

New Delhi: Congress party vice-president Rahul Gandhi is poised to kick off an organizational revamp designed to curb the influence of the old guard, according to senior party leaders.

Once in place, it will give younger leaders a larger role in the party.

Not only will it strengthen the hand of Gandhi, heir apparent to party president Sonia Gandhi, it will also allow the party to embrace newer ideas.

At the same time it risks triggering an internal power struggle which would further cripple the Congress.

The new organizational structure is likely to be one in which the responsibility of veteran general secretaries will be restricted to one state; at present they oversee three-four states with an equal number of national secretaries assigned to each state reporting to them.

ALSO READ : MCD election results 2017: What’s next for Congress?

In the revamped structure, national secretaries will be given independent charge of one state and will no longer be reporting to general secretaries. The revised structure is significant because the secretaries, most of whom are handpicked by Gandhi, will hold independent charge and will effectively be on a par with the general secretaries.

Senior party leaders say that apart from making changes in the top brass, a new team of the All India Congress Committee will be formed for every poll-bound state, a glimpse of which was evident on Wednesday with a new team assigned to Rajasthan.

“Gandhi held a series of meetings in the last one week with senior as well as young leaders. The party is of the view that younger leaders should be given more responsibility and hence we are mulling rolling out this new structure. It has been finalized in principle," a senior Congress leader aware of developments said, requesting anonymity.

To be sure, an organizational revamp was mooted after the 2014 election debacle, when the Congress managed to win only 44 seats, but the top leadership did not go ahead with it fearing a backlash from the old guard.

ALSO READ : 23 Congress councillors in Arunachal Pradesh join BJP

Then a section of younger national secretaries had come out in support of Gandhi, demanding that senior leaders “toe the party line" and spell out their views only on official party platforms.

Party leaders are now hopeful that organizational changes can help it revive after a series of poll debacles.

Signalling the impending revamp, the Congress on Wednesday appointed former Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot and four secretaries as in-charges of poll-bound Gujarat.

“Like Gujarat, the idea is to have a new central team for all the poll-bound states so as to ready them for elections... Our strategies for poll-bound states need to change and this is a step in that direction," another senior party leader said, also requesting anonymity.

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Published: 28 Apr 2017, 12:15 AM IST
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