Ahead of Lok Sabha elections, Rahul Gandhi appoints Ahmed Patel as Congress treasurer; Anand Sharma is head of foreign cell

Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday appointed Ahmed Patel as the new treasurer of the party, replacing Motilal Vora, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2019. Vora will now be AICC general secretary administration, a newly created post. Rahul also appointed former Union minister Anand Sharma as chairman of Congress Foreign Cell while former Speaker Meira Kumar was appointed as a permanent invitee to the Congress Working Committee. [caption id=“attachment_3865109” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of Senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel. PTI[/caption] Luizinho Falerio has been appointed as the AICC general secretary In-charge of North East states excluding Assam, replacing CP Joshi. Patel’s appointment ahead of the next year’s General Elections is being seen as an attempt to strike a balance between the old and young leaders, according to News18.  Patel, who was the political secretary of former party chief Sonia Gandhi, has earlier served the post of treasurer. The new appointments come a month after  Rahul reconstituted the Congress Working Committee, the party’s highest decision-making body, with a blend of young and old leaders. The new CWC, includes other veterans like AK Antony, Ahmed Patel, Ambika Soni, Motilal Vora, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mallikarjun Kharge, Anand Sharma and Kumari Selja. It has 23 members, 19 permanent invitees and nine special invitees, highly-placed sources said. The committee was dissolved prior to the election of the Congress president and the earlier panel was transformed into a steering committee till the party’s plenary session that concluded in March. The CWC, which acts as an advisory panel on all key decisions of the party, was not in place since the plenary session in March. With inputs from PTI