Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi today set up a five-member committee to study the reasons for the party's poor performance in the recent round of assembly elections.
The panel is headed by senior Maharashtra Congress leader Ashok Chavan and comprises former Union ministers Salman Khurshid and Manish Tewari, and Shillong MP Vincent H. Pala and Jothi Mani, who is said to be a member of Team Rahul.
The committee will submit its report in two weeks. It will consult state Congress leaders, candidates, party workers and members of the various organisational departments.
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Yesterday, at the meeting of the Congress Working Committee called to discuss the outcome of the assembly polls, Sonia Gandhi announced that a panel would be set up to probe the reasons for the party's disappointing performance in the state polls.
Gandhi said that the party's failure to win back Kerala and Assam was particularly worrying.
Meanwhile, she announced the setting up of a task force to coordinate the party's COVID-19 relief efforts. The 13-member panel, headed by party veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad, also includes Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Ambika Soni, Mukul Wasnik, K.C. Venugopal, Pawan Kumar Bansal, Jairam Ramesh, Randeep Surjewala, Manish Chatrath, Ajoy Kumar, Pawan Khera, Gurdeep Singh Sappal and B.V. Srinivas.
A subtext of the constitution of the two committees is trying to bring on board leaders who had come out in the open last year with their concerns over the way the party was being run.
Tewari, identified as a member of G-23, is a member of the fact-finding committee on elections. Azad, who is seen as leading the G-23 campaign, has been named as chairman of the COVID-19 task force. It also includes senior leader Mukul Wasnik, who was one of the signatories to the letter sent by the group of leaders to the Congress interim president last year.