Ahead of parliament’s monsoon session, Congress president Sonia Gandhi reconstituted the parliamentary groups inducting G-23 dissenters such as former Union ministers P Chidambaram, Manish Tewari, Ambika Soni and former chief minister Digvijaya Singh.
This development saw a section of G-23 leaders – authors of last year’s explosive dissent letter who ended up losing the various party positions – inducted in some key positions.
Among those G-23 dissenters, Shashi Tharoor and Manish Tiwari will be the part of the seven-member group in the Lok Sabha, Bengal chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury will remain the Loksabha leader and Gaurav Gogoi, son of late Tarun Gogoi, will be retained his position as deputy leader of the house.
However, the inclusion of Tiwari and Tharoor in the group underlines that Gandhi wants more heads in the party’s parliamentary decision-making process. A section of party leaders had earlier said that Chowdhury might be replaced and both Tiwari and Tharoor were perceived as a possible replacements for Chowdhury.
In a letter, Sonia Gandhi as the chairperson of Congress Parliamentary Party have decided to reconstitute the following groups to facilitate and ensure the effective functioning of the party in both houses of Parliament. These groups will meet daily during the session and can meet during the inter-session periods as well where Parliament issues are concerned.
Amongst other leaders, K Suresh retained his position as chief whip in the Lok Sabha, Ravneet Singh Bittu and Manickam Tagore held on to their positions as party whips in the reconstituted seven-member Lok Sabha group.
The letter makes it official that Bengal MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury will continue as the party leader in Lok Sabha. However, the inclusion of Manish Tiwari and Shashi Tharoor in the group underlines that Gandhi wants more heads in the party’s parliamentary decision-making process. Interestingly, both Tiwari and Tharoor were perceived as a possible replacements for Chowdhury.
In the Rajya Sabha hierarchy, which earlier had Mallikarjun Kharge as the Leader of the Opposition, Anand Sharma and Jairam Ramesh will now include Chidambaram, Soni and Singh—the three senior leaders with years of experience in parliament as well as the party.
The groups will have various roles including mustering numbers, coordinating with various political parties and deciding on key floor issues such as support for a bill or the extent of cooperation with the government. The groups are also responsible to decide which issue needs to be raised and how Congress will manoeuvre on issues raised by other parties.
The reshuffle comes a day before the monsoon session of the Parliament is set to begin after two curtailed sessions due to the ongoing pandemic. In Parliament, the Congress is set to corner the government over the ongoing price rise, economy, Centre’s Covid handling and slow pace of vaccination and there is also indication that the party will raise the issue of scam in Rafale deal in which the French court has recently ordered an investigation.
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