Sonia to head 50-member Congress campaign panel

New Delhi (IANS): Congress president Sonia Gandhi will head the party’s campaign committee for the Lok Sabha elections which has 50 members including party vice-president Rahul Gandhi as co-chairman, it was announced Tuesday.

Gandhi has approved the 2014 Lok Sabha election committee, said general secretary Janardan Dwivedi in a release here.

The committee has Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and union ministers A.K. Antony, Sushilkumar Shinde, P.Chidambaram, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Kamal Nath, Oscar Fernandes, Jairam Ramesh, Anand Sharma among its members.

The party has already declared Rahul Gandhi as chief of its campaign for the Lok Sabha polls expected in April-May.

General secretaries Digivijaya Singh, Dwivedi, Ambika Soni, Gurudas Kamat, B.K. Hariprasad, Mukul Wasnik, C.P. Joshi, Luizinho Faleiro, Madhusudan Mistry, Ajay Maken, Mohan Prakash, Shakeel Ahmed are also members of the panel.

Other members include party treasurer Motilal Vora, Congress president’s political secretary Ahmed Patel, union ministers Manish Tewari, Jyotiraditya Scindia, V. Narayansamy, Rajeev Shukla and Jitendra Singh.

Former chief ministers Ajit Jogi (Chhattisgarh), Sheila Dikshit (Delhi), Ashok Gehlot (Rajasthan), Capt Amarinder Singh (Punjab), former union ministers Mohsina Kidwai and Kumari Selja and MP Satyavrat Chaturvedi, party spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala and former Punjab minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal also find a place.