Congress is striving hard and leaving no stone unturned, while preparing for the Lok Sabha election due in 2019. Following the policy of ‘please all’ and ‘caste balance’ Congress high Command reshuffled its cabinet in Karnataka on Wednesday.
As part of its restructuring and reaching out efforts, the Congress also set up some new departments to deal with overseas and fishermen’s issues and renamed its scheduled tribes and research wings, while appointing new heads to them, on Thursday.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi has set up two new departments, ‘Fishermen’ department, with MLA from Kerala T N Prathapan as its chairman and Overseas Congress with Sam Pitroda as its chairman.
In his statement Party General Secretary Janardan Dwivedi said that, with the approval of Sonia Gandhi, ST Department was now renamed as ‘Adivasi Congress’. Former Union minister V Kishore Chandra Deo has been appointed the chairman of the ‘Adivasi Congress’ with immediate effect. Mahendrajeet Singh Malviya, Shyam Sunder Hansdah, Bellaih Naik, Manoj Mandvi and Atuwa Munda are appointed as the vice-chairmen of the Adivasi Congress.
Dwivedi also said that, Sonia Gandhi had approved the suggestion to constitute a new ‘Research Department’ in place of the Research and Coordination Department, Research and Reference Department and the Department of Policy, Planning and Coordination (DEPCO), which were constituted earlier. Rajya Sabha member M V Rajeev Gowda has been appointed as the chairman of Research department with immediate effect.