Congress president Rahul Gandhi has picked former Member of Parliament Tariq Hameed Karra as a member if its highest decision making body.
Yesterday, Gandhi had reconstituted the Congress Working Committee (CWC). Rahul Gandhi has also convened the first meeting of the extended CWC on July 22 to chalk out the party’s future strategy. The meeting will include all state unit presidents and Congress Legislative Party leaders from states.
According to a report in The Hindustan Times, the 51-member panel, including the main 23-member CWC, 18 permanent invitees and 10 special invitees, replaces the steering committee formed after the previous CWC was dissolved on February 16.
Karra, who was formerly associated with the PDP, has been nominated as the permanent invitee to CWC, making him first ever Congress leader from Kashmir and second in Jammu and Kashmir State after Ghulam Nabi Azad to make it to the prestigious decision making body of the Congress.
Besides Karra, Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit and former finance minister P Chidambaram, the permanent invitees now include party’s chief whip in the Lok Sabha Jyotiraditya, Randeep Surjewala, Balasaheb Thorat, and P C Chacko.
Karra who was a former Jammu and Kashmir minister and one of the founders of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), had joined congress party in February last year.
In September 2016, Karra had quit both from the party and Parliament, accusing the PDP of ‘bartering its ideology for staying in power.’
The resignation had come when Kashmir valley was battling the worst unrest it had seen in six years, in which nearly 100 civilians were killed and 10,000 injured.