Rahul appointed AICC general secretary

'Kitchen cabinet' constituted to assist him.

Rahul Gandhi was appointed All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary and given charge of the party's two youth wings "" the National Students' Union of India (NSUI) and the Youth Congress "" in a reshuffle of the party secretariat.

To accommodate Gandhi's relatively short tenure in politics "" he's been an MP since 2004 "" the Congress has set up a new committee calling itself a Group to Look Into Future Challenges.

Convened by junior trade minister Jairam Ramesh, this 13-member committee comprises both young and middle-aged Congress leaders "" former Karnataka chief minister Veerappa Moily is on it along with Sandeep Dikshit, Sachin Pilot and Jyotiraditya Scindia "" and is thought to be Gandhi's kitchen cabinet.

In his present appointment, Rahul Gandhi combines two posts held by his father Rajiv Gandhi and uncle Sanjay Gandhi in the course of their rise in the party.

Rajiv Gandhi was made general secretary prior to his mother Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984 and his own election as the prime minister thereafter. Sanjay Gandhi was an MP and chief of the Youth Congress during the Emergency of 1975 and resumed the two posts when the Congress returned to power in 1980.

Little is known of Rahul Gandhi's life outside politics except his 83 per cent holding in a little known Mumbai-based engineering company, Backops Services.

In the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections held in April-May, the Congress won just 22 seats, three less than the 25 it had bagged earlier, although Rahul Gandhi and his mother and Congress President Sonia Gandhi were projected as the Congress's star campaigners. Rahul has been elected to the Lok Sabha from Uttar Pradesh.

The 37-year-old first-time MP from Amethi had announced at the party plenary in Hyderabad last year that he would be ready to play an active role in the organisation if the party leadership so decreed but that he was not ready to take the responsibility yet. Apparently, impending elections and party pressure has made him change his mind.