Chandigarh: Aam Aadmi Party on Wednesday restructured its top decision-making bodies ahead of the high stakes Punjab election, inducting Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann and state finance minister Harpal Singh Cheema into its 10-member Political Affairs Committee (PAC)Earlier, Mann was a special invitee to PAC, the party’s apex body. Now, he has been made a permanent member.Interestingly, Punjab party chief Aman Arora has been removed from the National Executive, and Rajbir Ghuman, a controversial OSD to chief minister Bhagwant Mann, included.Apart from Arora, Punjab MLAs Sarabjit Kaur Manuke and Baljinder Kaur have also been removed from the 23-member National Executive. The other two entrants to the panel are former Delhi minister Satyendar Jain and Bibhav Kumar, considered an aide of AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal and a key organisational insider.Ghuman’s name had cropped up in the Enforcement Directorate’s investigation into the alleged “cash for transfer” case when the central agency asked Punjab Police to file an FIR against him. Ghuman and Mann have rejected ED’s accusations.The AAP national council met on Wednesday and re-elected Kejriwal as the party’s national convener. A total of 330 members participated in the meeting. Apart from Kejriwal, Mann and Cheema, the other National Executive members are Atishi, Adil Ahmad Khan, Anurag Dhanda, Dilip Pandey, Durgesh Pathak, Gopal Italia, Gopal Rai, Rani Agarwal, Manish Sisodia, Mohammad Irshad, ND Gupta, Pankaj Gupta, Preeti Sharma Menon, Prithvi Reddy, Rakhi Birla, Sanjay Singh, Satyendar Jain and Shelly Oberoi.
