Secrecy over electors pits rebels against Gandhis ahead of Congress Prez poll

Battling the perception that its forthcoming election for picking a new party chief is rigged to favour the Gandhi family or a candidate backed by it, the Congress party is now facing tough questions from its own leaders over the lack of transparency and fairness in the electoral procedure.

The party’s refusal to make public the identity of the 9,000 odd members who comprise the Electoral College that will choose Sonia Gandhi’s successor has become the latest flashpoint in the backdrop of a rising possibility that the new president will not be chosen by consensus but through a keenly contested election.

On Wednesday (August 31), Congress MPs Manish Tewari and Karti Chidambaram demanded that the party publish the electoral rolls on its website in the interest of a free and fair election. A similar demand was made by rebel Congress leader Anand Sharma at the meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) last Sunday (August 28) during which the schedule for electing the new Congress chief was approved.

Composition of Electoral College vital

As per the schedule cleared by the CWC, the election of the Congress president will take place on October 17. In the event of there being more than one candidate in the ring, members of the Electoral College – delegates picked from the booth, district and state units of the Congress party – will vote to elect Sonia’s successor and the result of the poll will be announced on October 19.

Though the Gandhis are yet to speak publicly on the electoral process, their loyalists in the party say Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka have, so far, maintained that none of them will contest the election and that a non-Gandhi must now lead the party. Speculation is rife that while the Gandhis want Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot to shoulder the ominous responsibility, the party may, for the first time in 22 years, witness a real election with one or more leaders challenging the nominee of the Gandhi family.

Also read: Doon to doom: Rahul Gandhi and coterie undo once-grand Congress

It is in this backdrop that the composition of the Electoral College will assume importance. Candidates entering the contest would want to know the identity of their voters to gauge where they would stand in the election, should they take the risk of earning the wrath of the Gandhi family by challenging its nominee.

Will the contest see a G-23 contender?

Though multi-cornered elections for the post of Congress president and the candidature of non-Gandhis in it was once a routine affair, the practice died down over the years, particularly after the year 2000 when Sonia Gandhi was unsuccessfully challenged for the post by party veteran Jitendra Prasada, who polled a miserable 94 votes in the Electoral College against the former’s 7,542 votes.

In 1997, when Sitaram Kesri contested for the Congress presidency with Pranab Mukherjee as his main campaigner, he pulled off the unimaginable feat of comprehensively defeating stalwarts such as Sharad Pawar and Rajesh Pilot. Kesri, in fact, had gone on to poll over 6,200 votes in the Electoral College while Pawar and Pilot could muster fewer than 1,300 votes between themselves.

Congress insiders say the October 17 election may witness a multi-cornered contest like the one seen in 1997. If the Gandhis, presently in mourning over the demise of Sonia’s mother Paola Maino, indeed stick to their insistence for a non-Gandhi chief and back Gehlot or some other colleague in the election, the remaining members of the largely diminished G-23 rebel faction could back a candidate of their own.

Sharma and Tewari, who are raising a stink over the party’s refusal to publish the electoral rolls, are both members of the G-23 as is Shashi Tharoor who recently indicated his willingness to contest for the Congress presidency.

For the G-23, which is now a club of not more than half a dozen sulking leaders – its key movers Ghulam Nabi Azad and Kapil Sibal have both exited the Congress – the task is to identify who among them is best suited to take on a candidate backed by the Gandhis.

Tewari is reportedly keen but so is Tharoor while another co-traveller, former Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, is also reportedly weighing his options. Party sources say that there may be one or more candidates who belong neither to the G-23 nor the ‘Gandhi family camp’ who may also enter the ring, though no probables have surfaced so far.

Leaders demand party to reveal Electoral College

Azad, who quit the party last week after issuing to the media a five-page resignation letter that was unsparing in its criticism of Rahul Gandhi, has said that the organisational election process is “a farce and a sham”. Azad has alleged that “handpicked lieutenants” of the AICC were “coerced to sign on lists prepared by the coterie” that runs the party and that “at no place in a booth, block, district or state was an electoral roll published”. He has also accused the Congress leadership of “perpetuating a giant fraud” on the party in the name of conducting a free and fair election.

That the party’s central election authority, which is tasked with conducting the organisational elections, is headed by Rahul-loyalist and lateral entrant Madhusudan Mistry hasn’t helped matters either. While raising the question of fairness in the electoral procedure, Tewari pointedly questioned Mistry when he tweeted, “How can there be a fair & free election without a publicly available electoral roll? Essence of a fair & free process is names & addresses of electors must be published on @INCIndia website in a transparent manner. (sic)”

The Congress MP from Punjab’s Anantpur Sahib then pointed out to Mistry that “you are quoted as saying ‘The list is not made public but if a member of our party wants to check, they can check at the PCC office. And, of course, it will be given to the candidates once they file their nomination papers’… Why should someone have to go to every PCC office in the country to find out who the electors are? This does not happen in a club election also.”

Interestingly, Tewari’s demand has been backed by Congress MP Karti Chidambaram, son of party veteran P. Chidambaram. “Every election needs a well-defined & clear electoral college. The process of forming the electoral college must also be clear, well defined & transparent. An ad hoc electoral college is no electoral college,” Karti tweeted.

Though the Chidambaram father-son duo aren’t officially part of the G-23, they have often found common cause with Azad, Sharma, Tewari and others on the manner in which the Congress has been functioning in recent years.

Mistry told The Federal that the party had conducted “an extensive, transparent and thorough exercise over several months” in preparing the electoral rolls “with the help of nearly 900 party leaders who acted as returning officers”. He said claims by the likes of Azad, Sharma and Tewari of wrongdoing or lack of transparency in the process are “completely unfounded, perhaps motivated”.

Asked why the party was adamant about not uploading the electoral rolls on its website if the process of preparing them was entirely transparent, Mistry said, “this is an organisational election, the electors are all party members so where is the need to put the list out for the common public?” He added, “as I have said earlier, those who want to contest the election are free to do so and they can get the list of electors while filing the nomination; I understand a candidate’s need to know 10 electors who can propose the candidature but they can get these 10 from their home state as the PCC office will have the list of delegates from the state.”

Also read: Ghulam Nabi Azad’s desertion: What does it mean for Cong in J&K?

Mistry may be right in claiming that in none of the previous elections for the Congress president were electoral rolls put out for public scrutiny. However, a section of party leaders, including those outside the G-23, claim that his argument will only perpetuate the impression that the organisational election is rigged to yield a pre-determined result – victory of the Gandhi family’s candidate.

“The current election is being held at a time that is vastly different from 1997 and 2000 when Kesri and Sonia won their elections; you can’t even compare the current situation with one that existed in 2017 when Rahul was elected unanimously… today, many within the party are raising questions publicly and there is already an impression that whoever we elect will be a puppet foisted on the high seat by the Gandhis… if publishing the list on the party website can dent that impression even marginally, what is the harm?” a Congress general secretary told The Federal, requesting anonymity.