New Delhi, July 17: Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday constituted the Congress Working Committee (CWC) by appointing 23 members and dropping some senior leaders in his bid to strike a balance between age and experience, and prepare for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Prominent among those dropped from the previous CWC include Digvijay Singh, Janardan Dwivedi, Kamal Nath and Sushilkumar Shinde.
The first CWC to be constituted by Gandhi after his elevation as party chief in December last also seeks to have balance in terms of regional representation.
The first meeting of the new CWC -- the party's highest decision-making body -- will be held on July 22.
The new faces in the CWC include former chief ministers Oommen Chandy (Kerala), Tarun Gogoi (Assam), Siddaramaiah (Karnataka) and Harish Rawat (Uttarakhand).
Former Union Minister Kumari Selja, party MP from Durg Tamradhwaj Sahu, former MP Raghuveer Meena and former Manipur Deputy Chief Minister Gaikhangam are the other new faces in the CWC.
Sahu is the only Congress MP in the Lok Sabha from Chhattisgarh where assembly polls will be held at the end of this year.
Apart from Digvijay Singh, Janardan Dwivedi, Kamal Nath and Sushilkumar Shinde, those dropped include Punjab Chief Minister Capt. Amarinder Singh and former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
Kamal Nath was earlier this year appointed chief of the party's Madhya Pradesh unit.
C.P. Joshi, B.K. Hariprasad, Karan Singh, Oscar Fernandes, Mohan Prakash, Hemo Prova Saikia and Sushila Tiriya have also been dropped.
The new CWC does not include any of the three Congress chief ministers.
United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be the senior members of the new CWC that will form the core team of the party for the state elections this year and the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The leaders who have been retained include Ghulam Nabi Azad, Ahmed Patel, Mallikarjun Kharge, Ashok Gehlot, Motilal Vora, A.K. Antony, Amika Soni, Anand Sharma, Mukul Wasnik, Avinash Pande, K.C. Venugopal and Dipak Babaria.
There are several young faces in the 18 permanent invitees of the new CWC.
The permanent invitees include former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit; former Union Minister P. Chidambaram; party MPs Jyotiraditya Scindia, Gaurav Gogoi, Rajeev Satav, Rajni Patil; former MPs Tariq Hameed Karra, P.L. Punia, P.C. Chacko, R.P.N. Singh, Jitendra Singh and Ram Chandra Khuntia; and party's communications incharge Randeep Singh Surjewala.
Other permanent invitees include Shaktisinh Gohil, Anugrah Narayan Singh, A. Chella Kumar, Balasaheb Thorat and Asha Kumari.
The special invitees are party leaders K.H. Muniyappa, Arun Yadav, Deepender Hooda, Jitin Prasada and Kuldeep Bishnoi, and chiefs of party's frontal organisations apart from president of the party's student wing National Students' Union of India (NSUI).
The CWC was announced four months after the All India Congress Committee (AICC) plenary session in March ratified the election of Gandhi as party chief and authorised him to reconstitute the party's top decision-making body.
Ahead of the plenary, Gandhi had turned the existing CWC into a steering committee.
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Batumi (Georgia), Jul 26 (PTI): Young Indian International Master Divya Deshmukh held her nerves to hold stalwart Koneru Humpy to a draw in game 1 of the FIDE Women's World Cup final, with both players having their share of opportunities to take the lead here on Saturday.
The draw with black means Humpy, the two-time World Rapid champion, holds a slight edge going in the second and final game under the classical chess rules in the two-game mini-match, and should the deadlock continue, games of shorter duration will be played to determine the winner.
Humpy employed the Queen's gambit accepted as black and it turned out to be a pretty fascinating game right out of the opening as Divya, 19, came up with a piece sacrifice early to deny the black king the right to castle.
Humpy was the first to err and, according to computers, Divya had things under control on the 14th move. However in her bid to recover the extra material, the Nagpur girl, who has secured a place in the Candidates tournament with her sterling performance here, missed a promising continuation.
What followed the exchange of all minor pieces and the ensuing queen and rook endgame gave enough counter play to both players. The game was eventually drawn after Humpy sacrificed her rook to force perpetual checks.
"The game saw an extremely sharp battle with the game ending in a draw in 41 moves. On move 7, Divya made her aggressive intentions clear by offering another pawn,
which looked like home preparation. Humpy made a practical decision of refraining from taking the pawn and a balanced position was reached by move 10 by white," said Grandmaster Pravin Thipsay, an Arjuna awardee and the first Indian to get a chess Grandmaster norm.
"However, instead of developing the undeveloped Knight, Humpy retreated the centralised Knight on move 10, giving huge positional advantage to Divya. Divya could have gained huge positional advantage on the 12th move by moving a rook. However, she chose to play for King side attack by sacrificing a piece instead.
"Humpy, too, erred at this stage and instead of moving the King to Queen side, moved it to the King side. Divya, on move 14, could have obtained a crushing attack by threatening a mate by developing her Queen. Instead she chose to exchange a pair of Bishops first, which enabled Humpy to defend her King by returning the piece," said Thipsay.
"Players thus reached a balanced Queen and two Rooks ending. Divya continued to play ambitiously and tried to attack Humpy’s King but the latter defended accurately and the game was drawn in 41 moves by perpetual check," he added.
In the play-off for the third place, Chinese players Zhongyi Tan, the former women's world champion and top seed Lei Tingjie also decided to split points out of a Queen’s gambit declined game.
The opening raised visions of a close contest between the two but having been knocked out of title race in the previous round, none of them wanted to take any huge risk. It was still a middle game when the players shook hands.
With the top two positions sealed for the Indians, the berth to the next Candidates is also assigned, while the player finishing third will also get an entry to the premier event scheduled for 2026.
Results: Divya Deshmukh (Ind) drew with Koneru Humpy (Ind); Zhongyi Tan (Chn) drew with Tingjie Lei (Chn).