Congress must make electoral roll public, say Shashi Tharoor, Pradyut Bordoloi

The Congress Working Committee (CWC) on Sunday announced that the election for the party’s president will be held on October 17

NEW DELHI: After Anand Sharma and Manish Tewari, Congress MPs Shashi Tharoor and Pradyut Bordoloi demanded that the list of delegates for the election of the party president should be made public.

Congress MPs Shashi Tharoor and Karti Chidambaram are among the group of Congress leaders who have asked the party leadership to place the electoral roll for the party president’s election in public domain. (PTI File Photo)

The Congress, however, said that anyone who files the nomination for the election, will be given a copy of the electoral roll. The party leaders have also added that if any leader wants to see the list, he or she can see the lists in the state Congress offices.

The electoral rolls for the election for the new Congress president must be made public to ensure transparency in the process, party MP and G23 leader Manish Tewari said on Wednesday. Party MPs Shashi Tharoor and Karti Chidambaram have also said that everyone should know who can nominate and who can vote.

Tharoor and Bordoloi, two Lok Sabha MPs of the Congress, have written to Madhusudan Mistry, in charge of the election committee, demanding that the list of delegates should be made public.

The Congress Working Committee (CWC) on Sunday announced that the election for the party’s president will be held on October 17 and the results will be announced on October 19. In that meeting, Anand Sharma questioned if the elections were properly held at the ground level and wanted the list of delegates to be made public.

The demand by the four lawmakers came against the backdrop of Congress leader Anand Sharma questioning if the due process was being followed for the party’s organisational election.

Both Sharma and Tewari were among the 23 leaders, popularly called “G23”, who wrote to Congress president Sonia Gandhi in 2020, seeking organisational reforms in the party. On August 26, Ghulam Nabi Azad, who had also signed off on the letter, quit the Congress, blaming the leadership for the party’s reducing footprint in the country.

In a series of tweets on Wednesday, Tewari questioned the process to pick a new party president in the absence of a publicly available electoral roll. He also said that Madhusudan Mistry, chairman of Congress’s Central Election Authority (CEA), must publish the names and addresses of electors on the Congress website.

“With great respect Madhusudan Mistry ji, how can there be a fair and free election without a publicly available electoral roll? Essence of a fair and free process is (that) names and addresses of electors must be published on the Congress website in a transparent manner,” the lawmaker from Anandpur Sahib in Punjab wrote on the micro-blogging site.

The Congress leader also took note of Mistry’s statement to The Hindu that “the list is not made public but if a member of our party wants to check, they can check at the PCC (Pradesh Congress Committee) office.