The 71-year old former Gujarat Chief Minister Shankarsinh Vaghela, who was the textile minister in the UPA-I government but lost elections in 2009, was on Friday given the reigns of the Congress campaign in the Gujarat Assembly elections slated next year.

His appointment as chairman of the campaign committee comes six months after Arjun Bhai Modhwadia, a Porbander MLA, was appointed the president of the Gujarat Congress to fill the vacancy caused by resignation of Siddharth Patel, son of late chief minister Chimanbhai Patel.

Despite Congress President Sonia Gandhi not yet back in Delhi after a surgery in New York and not expected to be back for at least another week or so, a one-line press note issued by party chief spokesman and general secretary Janardan Dwivedi says she has approved the proposal for Vaghela's appointment. She had appointed a 4-member group that includes son Rahul Gandhi to take decisions in her absence but the party continues to claim she continues to take the decisions.

Vaghela has a multifaceted personality, starting his political career by undergoing a RSS training course and rising to be the president of the Gujarat BJP. He, however, revolted against the BJP government and formed own regional party to become the chief minister for a while before merging it into the Congress.

His rise in the Congress was a constant heartburn for those in the party as they always treated him as an intruder, an outsider with the RSS ideology and hence they saw his defeat in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections as end of his political career in the party.

Vaghela lied low for a while after losing the election and even flirted with the idea of floating own party once again, but the Congress leadership seems to have fallen for him as the party has no senior leader of his stature in Gujarat and he already has a reputation of political manipulations in the elections.