Ahmed Patel was AICC treasurer between 1996 and 2000
At a time when the Congress is said to be facing a severe cash crunch, party president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday appointed veteran leader Ahmed Patel as the AICC treasurer, replacing 89-year-old Motilal Vora.
Rahul also divested C P Joshi of the charge of north-eastern states, appointing Luizinho Faleiro in his place. Joshi, at one point, was in charge of 10 states, including Bihar, West Bengal and Assam.
Patel, who was political secretary to Sonia Gandhi when she was the Congress president, was AICC treasurer between 1996 and 2000. Like Patel, Faleiro, a former Goa chief minister and an MLA in the state at present, also makes a return. He had been in charge of the north-eastern states earlier.
Rahul also appointed senior leader Anand Sharma as the chairperson of the party’s foreign affairs department, replacing Karan Singh, and Vora as AICC general secretary in charge of administration, a newly-created post. Vora’s replacement as AICC treasurer is said to have been on the cards for some time.
Ahmed Patel had stepped down as the AICC treasurer in 2000 in protest against what he had called a “jihad” launched against him by a group of Congressmen in Gujarat. Congress leaders said Patel, who turned 69 on Tuesday, is the best possible choice for the post of treasurer at a time when the party is facing financial difficulties.
Joshi ceases to be an AICC general secretary after Faleiro’s appointment. Sources had been claiming that he would appointed as chairman of the campaign committee for Rajasthan, which goes to the polls later this year. Joshi’s tenure as in-charge of north-eastern states had been controversial, as several Congress leaders from the region had been very critical of his style of functioning.
As part of the appointments, former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar was inducted into the Congress Working Committee (CWC) as a permanent invitee. The changes come a month after Rahul restructured the party set-up and dropped veterans such as Digvijaya Singh, Sushikumar Shinde, Janardhan Dwivedi and C P Joshi from the CWC and appointed some new faces to replace them.