National Committee Reconstituted: No Nehru-Gandhi On Board

National Committee Reconstituted: No Nehru-Gandhi On Board
The Nehru-Gandhis are well represented in the political arena. On the Congress side, there is a party President as well as an MP. On the BJP side, there is a Union Minister and an MP. However, the National Committee to commemorate the 125th Birth Anniversary of India's first PM, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru has been reconstituted without a single Nehru-Gandhi on board. India's PM Narendra Modi has reconstituted the National Committee and he himself will be chairing the committee. The PM led committee's first meeting will be soon following the festival of Diwali.

The composition of the reconstituted committee is as follows. The Ex-officio members of the committee include the Home Minister. Minister of External Affairs, Finance Minister, Minister of Human Resource Development, Minister of Culture, Minister of Information and Broadcasting as well as MP Ghulam Nabi Azad. Members of the committee include MP Mallikarjun Kharge, Sikkim's ex-governor B. P. Singh, Naresh Yadav, M. K. Rasgotra as well as the governors of MP and the ex-foreign secretary.

Also members of this committee are Drs. Subhash Kahsyap, Lokesh Chandra, Karan Singh and Suman Dubey along with Naresh Chandra and Professor Madhavan Palat. Dr. Chandrasekhar Dasgupta as well as Professor Nasir Tybaji are also members of the committee along with Vice Admiral K. K. Nayyar. Other members include well known senior journalist Rajat Sharma and Swapan Dasgupta. M. J. Akbar is also a member as is the ex-governor of Uttarakhand and Shri Sudarshan Aggrawal.

Apart from the complete committee, the PM has also approved the formation of a National Implementation Committee for this milestone. The Committee was established during the previous UPA government's tenure under the PM at that time, Dr. Manmohan Singh. Its members had included Congress President Sonia Gandhi along with ministers such as A. K. Antony and P. Chidambaram. The committee now does not have even a single member of the Nehru Gandhi family.

The move to reset up the committee has not met with a favorable response from the Congress whose General Secretary Ajay Maken said, “The government has woken up too late. Congress president Sonia Gandhi had resigned from the committee set up by the UPA government on May 16 itself. Why wait for so many months? There is hardly any time left now.” He added “This shows they are not doing it with the right intention.” Meanwhile, the PMO has indicated that the birth anniversary will be an occasion for connecting with school children. The Congress-BJP divide is getting bigger with each passing day.