(From top) Janardhan Dwivedi, Ambika Soni and Ahmed Patel

New Delhi, Aug. 5: Power equations in the Congress organisational hierarchy are changing.

New power centres are emerging, a fortnight after party chief Sonia Gandhi revamped her team at the party headquarters, signalling competition for supremacy among senior leaders.

The “rising star” in the new AICC team is Janardhan Dwivedi, a Nehru-Gandhi loyalist who had been biding his time before coming into prominence as one of Sonia’s speechwriters. He is also in charge of the party’s organisational affairs.

If Dwivedi’s appointment as a general secretary a fortnight ago surprised many, Sonia has since left little room for speculation over his growing prominence in her scheme of things.

On Tuesday, the Congress chief preferred Dwivedi as one of the candidates for the two vacant Rajya Sabha slots from Delhi, ahead of M.. Fotedar, a long-time family loyalist and one-time all-powerful political secretary to Indira Gandhi.

Dwivedi’s rise has shut the door on Fotedar’s comeback aspirations, and party sources say some of the more powerful party functionaries have begun feeling the heat. Among them are said to be general secretary Ambika Soni and Sonia’s political secretary Ahmed Patel.

Soni has enjoyed “unrestricted” access to the Congress chief for over three years, emerging as the unofficial number two in the organisation. Patel has worked to win Sonia’s trust and became her political secretary 14 months ago.

“There were two power centres in the organisation, one led by Ambika (Soni) and the other by Patel. Now, with Dwivedi’s arrival, the two will have to contend with a third centre,” a party leader said.

Dwivedi and Fotedar have been together in a rival camp that owed its allegiance to Congress veteran Arjun Singh. On a couple of occasions last year, Singh had made public his differences with the coterie around Sonia that had allegedly been formed by Soni and her supporters.

Dwivedi’s rise is not the only challenge organisational heavyweights have to face now that the party has returned to power. Sources said these leaders are also being overshadowed by some powerful ministers even in party matters.

“There was a time when leaders like Pranab Mukherjee, Arjun Singh and Ghulam Nabi Azad were trying hard to get into Sonia’s AICC team. That was successfully resisted by the establishment leaders.

However, now as senior ministers these leaders have direct access to the Congress president’s 10, Janpath residence and their views on party affairs are being heard by the party chief. Mukherjee, in fact, has been formally entrusted with the responsibility of the party affairs in Ambika’s Punjab,” a leader said.

The ministerial shadow over party affairs has virtually dashed the leaders’ initial hopes of establishing the organisational wing’s supremacy over the governmental wing in the manner of the Left parties.