Explained: How Congress’ first presidential poll in 22 years will be conducted

Come Monday (October 17), some 9,100 delegates of the Congress party – MLAs, MPs, some office bearers as well as ordinary party members chosen through an internal selection process – will vote to elect their new national president for the first time in 22 years. With two candidates, 80-year-old Mallikarjun Kharge and 66-year-old Shashi Tharoor, in the fray, the Congress’ central election authority (CEA) will conduct the counting of votes and declare the election result on October 19.

The election for its president, a system rarely invoked but unique to the Congress party as all other major political outfits of the country – national and regional – choose their chiefs through an opaque system of nomination, has predictably aroused both public interest and scrutiny. The election has also attracted criticism of being a farcical exercise given the widely held perception that though, for the first time in a quarter century, no member of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is in the fray, the victor will merely act as a puppet of the Congress’s undisputed first family.

The voting process

Last week,  the party’s CEA head Madhusudan Mistry addressed a press conference to elaborate on the voting process and had given a mock demonstration of the ballot papers and boxes that would be used for the election. Mistry said the election will be held through a secret ballot system to ensure that every delegate’s choice of candidate is protected and that both contestants have a level-playing field.

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On Saturday (October 15), Mistry and his colleagues in the CEA also held a meeting with all returning officers for the election and demonstrated the voting process. The ballot papers and sealed ballot boxes will now be sent to headquarters of every state and territorial Congress unit where they will be kept in a strong room till polling day.

On October 17, they will set up 36 polling stations that will collectively account for 67 polling booths across all PCC and territorial Congress headquarters as well as at the party’s national headquarters at 24, Akbar Road in Delhi. A bulk of the votes will be cast by delegates at the polling stations set up in PCC and territorial Congress offices while members of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) as well as other party leaders who have sought special permission from the CEA to cast their votes in Delhi instead of their home states will be allowed to vote at the polling station set up at the AICC headquarters.

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Mistry said 47 delegates who are currently participating in the Bharat Jodo Yatra and had informed the CEA of their inability to reach their mandated polling booths in different states on polling day have been allowed to cast their votes through postal ballot.

QR-coded ID cards

In a first, all delegates have been issued QR-coded voter identity cards for the election which display their photographs, names, enrollment number and other relevant details. The ballot papers for the election will have two parts – the top half mentioning the names of the candidates against whom votes have to be cast and the latter half with a counterfoil on which each delegate has to fill in details such as name, concerned Pradesh Congress unit, voter enrollment number and signature. The counterfoil will need to be filled by the delegate before marking the preference of the candidate. The returning officer concerned will then tear off the counterfoil for official records and return the ballot paper to the delegate, who will then cast her/his vote in accordance with the secret ballot system.

Once all delegates at a polling station have cast their ballots, the ballot boxes will be sealed by the returning officers and polling agents of the two candidates will sign off on the seal. The sealed ballot boxes will be brought to Delhi by the returning officers by flight either on October 17 evening or October 18.

State-wise tally not to be revealed

The Mistry panel has reportedly sought special permission from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and the Union aviation ministry to allow the returning officers to carry the ballot boxes on flights. Permission has also been sought to ensure that the airport security personnel do not insist on breaking the seals of the ballot boxes during the luggage check-in process.

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A strong room has been installed at the AICC headquarters where the sealed ballot boxes will be stored till the counting of ballots begins on October 19. Polling agents of each candidate will be allowed to inspect the sealed boxes for any tampering before the boxes are opened for counting. Once the ballot boxes are opened, all ballot papers will be mixed to ensure that a state-wise tally of votes cast in favour of either candidate is not divulged.

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The counting of votes is expected to be over by noon following which Mistry, as chairperson of the CEA, will declare the winner.

Gandhis’ neutral approach

The party has repeatedly asserted that the Gandhis – interim party chief Sonia Gandhi, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra – have adopted a neutral approach and aren’t lobbying for any candidate in the interest of a free and fair election. However, Kharge is viewed as a nominee of the first family and is, thus, touted to win the contest comfortably.

Though both Kharge and Tharoor have maintained that the Gandhis are not endorsing either of them, the three-term Thiruvananthapuram MP has repeatedly averred to “an uneven playing field”. Tharoor has claimed inconsistencies in the voter lists provided to him by the Madhusudan Mistry-led CEA and alleged that several party office bearers, including some chiefs of Congress’ state units, have ignored election guidelines issued by the CEA and tacitly backed Kharge over him.

The complaints by Tharoor, of course, are not new to the Congress’ internal election process. Similar allegations had been made by Jitendra Prasada when he contested the party’s last presidential election against Sonia Gandhi. Prasada had suffered a humiliating defeat in that election, held in the year 2000, and polled just 94 votes in the Electoral College against Sonia’s 7,448 votes. Questions over violation of election guidelines and lack of transparency in selecting voters who constitute the Electoral College as well as inconsistencies in voter lists were also raised by Sharad Pawar and Rajesh Pilot who had contested and lost the Congress’s 1997 presidential contest against Sitaram Kesri.

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‘Only one complaint from Tharoor’

Mistry has stridently dismissed all claims of the election being rigged or there being any opacity or inconsistency in the voter lists. Mistry told The Federal that the process of selecting delegates was carried out “over a period of several months earlier this year” and that returning officers appointed by the CEA had “completed this exercise after holding extensive discussions with party members across the board, from the booth and district levels right up to the state and national level”. 

He conceded that despite “our best efforts, some minor discrepancies such as wrong entry of mobile numbers had crept in when the final lists were drawn” but claimed that “these were addressed as soon as they were brought to our notice by our colleagues, including Shashi Tharoor”.

Without divulging the details, Mistry said he had received “only one complaint from Tharoor” and claimed that “this was addressed promptly and to the satisfaction of the candidate”.

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