Cong media team to fight Kejriwal, Modi

The Congress on Tuesday announced its “media team” to fight a media war with Team Modi and Team Kejriwal in the Lok Sabha battle ahead.
While Union ministers P. Chidambaram, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Salman Khurshid, Anand Sharma, Shashi Tharoor and Jyotiraditya Scindia will try to puncture the BJP’s campaign against the Manmohan Singh government, Mukul Wasnik, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, P.C. Chacko, Satyavrat Chaturvedi, Shakeel Ahmad, Sandeep Dikshit, Randeep Surjewala and Raj Babbar will counter the BJP’s propaganda.
The AICC briefing will now be held at 2 pm instead of at 4.15 pm at the AICC headquarters here for five days a week. The party has changed its briefing time to compel the BJP to react to its agenda.
Besides these spokespersons, All-India Mahila Congress chief Shobha Oza and former Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi have been included in the team of AICC spokespersons.
The 42-member “media team” consists of five senior spokespersons, 13 spokespersons and 24 media panellists who represent the party on nearly three dozen television channels
Besides, the party also announced a 30-member team of national media panellists to speak on state issues.
AICC general secretary Ajay Maken, chairman of the communication, publicity and publication department, announced the 72-member new team approved by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi.
The members of the media team were handpicked on the basis of their performance in the media workshop organised by the AICC in the last few months and on TV channels.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which has confined to Delhi so far, is perhaps the only regional party effectively using the social media and the electronic media. On the other hand, BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is said to have built up his own team for social media and research inputs.
Mr Rahul Gandhi reconstituted the media team after realising that the party is unable to counter the “war of perception” against the BJP and regional players.
According to a Congress official, the media interaction will now be sharp and focused and will counter the propaganda war of political rivals.
A number of faces included in the “media team” this time are close aides of Mr Gandhi and have Youth Congress or NSUI background.
Shaktisinh Gohil, Brijesh Kalappa, Chandan Yadav, C.R. Keshavan (great grandson of C. Rajagopalachari), Mukesh Nayak, Ragini Nayak are some of faces in the media team.
After Jayanthi Natarajan was made a minister in UPA-II, party MP Renuka Chowdhury had replaced her as Congress spokesperson. Last year, she was also dropped and since then there was no regular woman spokesperson in the AICC, though Ms Oza came for formal briefings once or twice. Party MP Abhishek Singhvi is back as spokesperson while Bhakta Charan Das has been dropped from the list.
Meem Afzal, who was one of the national spokespersons of AICC media team, is also out, but he has been accommodated in the 24-member Congress team of television panellists.