The dampener came in the lack of sufficient women in the panel, indicating the extent of pulls and pressures in the Congress which Sonia apparently hasn't been able to counter. This has resulted in belying her promise of reserving 33 per cent party posts to women and the AICC now follows the CWC in having fewer women than stipulated in the newly-amended party constitution.

The new AICC general secretaries are: Ambika Soni, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Madhavrao Scindia, Oscar Fernandes, Pranab Mukherjee, R.K. Dhawan and Sushil Kumar Shinde. Ahmed Patel stays the party treasurer. Tariq Anwar and Meira Kumar have been sacked on expected lines but Dhawan escaped the guillotine. Backed by Sharad Pawar's support, Azad made it to the general secretary's postwhile Pranab was inducted almost at the last minute.

Tariq paid for backing Sonia's predecessor Sitaram Kesri even when he claimed Sonia's becoming Congress president was illegal. Meira was sacked for sheer ineptitude and now has the job of overseeing the welfare of OBCs and SC/STs as head of the new committee formed for the purpose by Sonia.Work allocation too shows that Sonia was forced to accommodate almost everybody and most general secretaries have got plum portfolios. Soni has been given charge of the north-east, his first task in the elevated post. She has thus managed a double promotion in the party having been nominated to the CWC a few days ago.

Azad has been given charge of Karnataka, West Bengal, Delhi and party frontal organisations. Scindia retains charge of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Orissa and Goa and has additional charge of Gujarat in place of Bihar which he was in charge of till yesterday.

Oscar Fernandes will look after the CWC and organisation election-related work. He also has chargeof the party's various departments and cells. However, he has been divested of the organisation's general administration which has now been given to Ahmed Patel. Patel also gets the troublesome state of Jammu and Kashmir to handle. Pranab Mukherjee gets Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Madhya Pradesh, the last state from Tariq who held charge of it till he was sacked. Dhawan retains most of his old portfolio barring Karnataka. He is now responsible for Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Himachal Pradesh.

The plum states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which are also a huge headache for the Congress, which is striving to revive itself in these areas, have gone to Shinde. Mani Shankar Aiyar, one of the AICC secretaries, has been asked to oversee Lakshwadeep, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Andaman and Nicobar.

Basically, Sonia has lived upto her promise of reserving a minimum of 20 per cent party posts to minorities, OBCs and SC/STs with Azad and Shinde fitting the bill. However,Ambika Soni stays the lone woman in the enlarged general secretaries' panel, the number having been increased from five to seven. Indications were that new CWC member Mohsina Kidwai could be made an AICC general secretary but Ghulam Nabi Azad pipped her to the post. Azad has been a past AICC general secretary while for Kidwai, it would have been a first. The retaining of Dhawan too has raised eyebrows after his exit was almost certain. Dhawan was the first candidate to have been cleared by Kesri in the last general election, even before the CWC could discuss the issue. He beat Sheila Dikshit to the New Delhi constituency after 10, Janpath indicated that Dikshit should be given the ticket.

But in the new set-up, he doesn't seem to have lost much. Scindia too has achieved Sonia's backing and has been rewarded with the charge of Gujarat, in the eye of a storm following the attacks on minorities in the state. Gujarat is the priority state n the RSS' plan which has slotted it to be the first state to go ``fullyHindutva''.