The electoral roll for the election of the next Congress president must be made public to ensure transparency in the process, party MPs Manish Tewari and Shashi Tharoor said on Wednesday, adding to a similar demand made by “G23” leader Anand Sharma recently.
Echoing their sentiments, Congress MP Karti Chidambaram asserted that everyone should know who can nominate and who can vote in the election.
The Congress Working Committee (CWC) on Sunday announced that the poll for the party’s president will be held on October 17 and the results will be announced on October 19.
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The three lawmakers’ demands on Wednesday came after Sharma, at the CWC meet, raised questions on whether due process was being followed in the party’s organisational elections.
Both Sharma and Tewari were part of the group of 23 leaders, popularly called “G23”, who wrote to Congress president Sonia Gandhi in 2020, seeking organisational reforms in the party. On August 26, senior leader and another “G23” leader, Ghulam Nabi Azad, quit the Congress, blaming the leadership for the party’s reducing footprint in the country.
In a series of tweets, 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.
{{/usCountry}}In a series of tweets, 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.
{{/usCountry}}“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 Twitter.
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.” “And, of course, it will be given to the candidates once they file their nomination papers,” Mistry said.
Tewari sought to know why anyone seeking to contest the Congress president’s election should go to the PCC office to get the electoral roll as “this does not even happen in a club election”.
The CWC announced the election for the party’s president and not to 28 PCC’s and Territorial Congress Committee (TCCs), he said. “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 with great respect. In interests of fairness & transparency, I urge your gods self to publish entire list of electors on @INCIndia website,” he said added.
The Punjab MP further questioned “how can someone consider running if he/she does not know who electors are”.
“If someone has to file his/her nomination & gets it proposed by 10 Congresspersons, as is requirement, CEA can reject it saying they are not valid electors,” he said.
Party MPs Tharoor and Chidambaram rallied behind Tewari.
Tharoor said everybody should know who can nominate and who can vote.
“Certainly, I think it’s important that everybody should have transparency on the electoral rolls. If that’s what Manish has asked for, then I’m sure that it’s a principle that everybody would agree with,” the Thiruvananthapuram MP said at a function in the Kerala capital.
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“Everybody should know who can nominate and who can vote. There is nothing wrong with that,” he added.
Chidambaram said every election requires a well-defined 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,” the lawmaker from Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu tweeted.
The party’s announcement on Sunday to hold the poll next month came amid speculations that the Gandhi family could step aside to make way for a non-Gandhi president of the party. The final schedule of the election was pushed back by nearly a month from the original plan.
Sharma, who recently resigned as chairman of the party’s steering committee for Himachal Pradesh, said he received several complaints that no meetings were held to elect delegates for the party’s presidential poll, HT reported on Monday.
The list of delegates is crucial for the Congress president election as they will vote in the poll. If the list is skewed in favour of the party’s ruling establishment, a rival candidate could face an unfair contest, a party functionary had said.
Mistry has maintained that if there is a contest, all candidates would be able to access the list of delegates.