Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Thursday reconstituted the party’s disciplinary action committee, dropping senior leader and former Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad from the panel.Azad, a CWC member, is part of the G23 — the group that wrote to Sonia demanding sweeping changes in the party structure. Sonia also dropped former Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and former Arunachal Chief Minister Mukut Mithi from the committee.The omission of Azad came a day after at least 20 J&K Congress leaders considered close to him resigned from their party positions to press for a leadership change in the Union Territory. These included former ministers G M Saroori, Vikar Rasool and Dr Manohar Lal Sharma; former legislators Jugal Kishore Sharma, Ghulam Nabi Monga, Naresh Gupta, Mohammad Amin Bhat, Subash Gupta; State Congress vice-president Anwar Bhat, and Kulgam District Development Council member Anyatullah Rather.The new disciplinary action committee, headed by A K Antony again, will have AICC general secretary Tariq Anwar as member secretary, and CWC member Ambika Soni, senior Delhi Congress leader Jai Prakash Aggarwal and Karnataka leader G Parameshwara as members. The panel has hardly met after the death of one of its members, Motilal Vora, in December last year.Azad was among the prominent members of the G23. Kapil Sibal, a vocal member of the G23, had triggered a controversy recently when he said at a press conference that “in our party, at the moment, there is no president, so we don’t know who is taking these decisions. We know and yet we don’t know.”Addressing a CWC meeting last month, Sonia asserted that she was “a full-time and hands-on Congress president”, adding that she “always appreciated frankness” and there was no need to speak to her “through the media”.
