In a major reshuffle, President Pranab Mukherjee’s daughter Sharmistha Mukherjee, south Indian actress Khusboo besides party MP Ranjita Ranjan on Tuesday made their entry into the team of Congress spokespersons. The party’s media secretary for over a decade, Tom Vadakkan, has also been made a spokespersons. SV Ramni is the new Secretary of the AICC media department while Pranav Jha and Ashish Dua have been brought in as media coordinators.
Senior party members Ajay Maken, CP Joshi, Satyavrat Chaturvedi and Shakeel Ahmed figure in the list of senior spokespersons. The four are in addition to the existing team of Anand Sharma, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mukul Wasnik, P Chidambaram and Salman Khurshid. The team of spokespersons is headed by Randeep Singh Surjewala in the capacity of Communication Department In-Charge. Earlier, Maken was the Chairman of the Media Department. With this, the party now has 36 spokespersons, including senior spokespersons, who are expected to tone up Congress’ media outreach. The new spokespersons include party MPs Deepender Hooda, Gaurav Gogoi, Rajiv Satav, Sushmita Deb and RPN Singh.
Bhakta Charan Das and Meem Afzal, who were spokespersons earlier, made a comeback after several months. Priyanka Chaturvedi, who was TV panelist of the party, have also been brought in as spokespersons. Others in the list of new spokespersons include Rajya Sabha MPs P l Punia, Rajiv Gowda and Rajni Patil and ex MPs Madhu Goud Yakshi and Vijay Inder Singla. They will be spokespersons in addition to the existing team of Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Ajoy Kumar, Jyotiraditya Scindia, P C Chacko, Raj Babbar, Rita Bahuguna Joshi, Sandeep Dikshit, Sanjay Jha and Shaktisinh Gohil.
The list of new media panelists has former Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari, Rajiv Shukla, former Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde’s daughter Praniti Shinde, Jammu and Kashmir PCC chief Saifuddin Soz’s son Salman Soz, late former Union Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s son Amit Deshmukh, late Vice President Krishna Kant’s son Rashmi Kant Maharashtra spokesperson Anant Gadgil, who is son of Congress veteran V N Gadgil.
Haryana PCC chief Ashok Tanwar, former NSUI chief RaginiNayak, Bihar MP Ranjita Ranjan, Rajya Sabha MPs Bhalchandra Mungerkar and Hussain Dalwai, AICC Secretary Sanjay Nirupam and Uttar Pradesh spokesperson Akhilesh Pratap Singh have been included in the panelists’ team.