Veteran leader steps aside to make way for younger faces in party’s foreign affairs team
New Delhi: Congress leader Anand Sharma resigned on Sunday as chairman of the party’s Department of Foreign Affairs to facilitate its reconstitution and bring in younger leaders.
The former Union minister had led the department for around a decade, with the National Committee of the Department of Foreign Affairs last constituted in 2018.
“As I have conveyed earlier to both the CP and the chairperson CPP, in my considered view, the committee needs to be reconstituted to bring in younger leaders of potential and promise. That will ensure continuity in its functioning. Expressing my gratitude to the party leadership for having entrusted me with this responsibility, I am submitting my resignation as chairman DFA to facilitate its reconstitution,” Sharma wrote in his resignation letter to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.
A member of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s highest decision-making body, Sharma has been a prominent Congress voice on international affairs for nearly four decades. He continues to remain a member of the party.
Sharma played a key role in negotiating the Indo-US nuclear deal, securing India-specific waivers at the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and institutionalising the India-Africa partnership, including convening the first India-Africa summit. He was also part of recent all-party parliamentary delegations sent abroad to present India’s stance after Operation Sindoor, and he articulated India’s position globally following the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
