The committee, headed by PM, includes Congress leaders
New Delhi: In what can be described as a snub to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her family, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday reconstituted the committee on the commemoration of the 125th birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru and kept out the Gandhis.
Interestingly, the committee, headed by Mr Modi himself, will include some Congress leaders, like Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mallikarjun Kharge and Karan Singh.
Mr Modi will replace his predecessor Manmohan Singh. Earlier, Mrs Gandhi and then Union ministers A.K. Antony, P. Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal were in the committee. The committee was set up during the previous UPA government and was headed by Dr Singh. After Mr Modi took over as PM, Mrs Gandhi had resigned from the committee.
However, the Congress had set up its own party-level committee for the celebrations, with former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit as its chairperson.
Mr Modi’s move to revive the committee assumes significance as the Congress has been accusing the BJP government of “erasing Nehru’s legacy”.
With Nehru’s 125th birth anniversary falling on November 14, the first meeting of the committee will be held after Diwali, a PMO statement said.
The reconstituted committee has Mr Modi as chairman while home minister Rajnath Singh, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, finance minister Arun Jaitley, HRD minister Smriti Irani, I&B minister Prakash Javadekar and culture minister Sripad Yesso Naik will be its ex-officio members.
Mr Azad, LoP in the Rajya Sabha, and Mr Kharge, leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, will be members, along with MP governor Ram Naresh Yadav, former Sikkim governor B.P. Singh, former foreign secretary M.K. Rasgotra and former LS secretary-general Subhash Kashyap. Senior Congress leader Karan Singh and Suman Dubey have also been included.
