Congress comes out of moratorium, appoints national spokesperson
Congress on Monday finally decided to have a mechanism in place and appointed Anshul Meira Kumar and Sharmistha Mukherjee as national spokesperson of All India Congress Committee (AICC).
After putting a moratorium on its spokesperson from appearing on television channels and giving bytes, Congress on Monday finally decided to have a mechanism in place and appointed Anshul Meira Kumar and Sharmistha Mukherjee as national spokesperson of All India Congress Committee (AICC).
The appointments come nearly a month after Sonia Gandhi took charge as the interim president of the Congress.
The self imposed moratorium had reduced the Congress' media presence on the national level and was hurting its interests in want of giving proper response to Modi government and BJP's well oiled media machinery, a Congress leader said welcoming the move.
Anshul Kumar is the son of former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar and the grandson of former Deputy Prime Minister of India and popular Dalit leader Jagjivan Ram.
Sharmistha Mukherjee is the daughter of former President of India and veteran Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee. She was previously a spokesperson for the Delhi Congress. She had quit the post in February after Sheila Dikshit revamped the state unit.
Tweeting about her promotion, Sharmistha Mukherjee expressed her gratitude to Sonia Gandhi and Randeep Surjewala.
Both will work under the overall in-charge of media communications, Randeep Singh Surjewala.
After facing a drubbing in the Lok Sabha polls, many spokespersons had resigned from their posts. The party had even declared that it would not be sending any representatives for television debates for a month after the Lok Sabha results were announced.
Earlier in the year, the party faced another controversy when national spokesperson quit the Congress alleging harassment from party workers.
Leaving on a bitter note, Priyanka Chaturvedi had accused the party of taking no action on her complaints.
Another senior member of the Congress's media team Tom Vadakkan had quit the party in March and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party. Vadakkan stated that he was upset with Congress' stand on the Pulwama attack, in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed.