A clash broke out in Congress over the forthcoming elections to the post of party president, with three MPs publicly demanding that the electoral rolls be made public, and the party rejecting it by saying that the practice has never existed. After G23 leader Anand Sharma made the demand in CWC meeting, another dissident Manish Tewari said it be done in the interest of “free and fair polls” to help potential candidates who would need signatures of 10 delegates to file their papers. He found support from Shashi Tharoor and Karti Chidamabram, son of veteran P Chidambaram.
Madhusudan Mistry, AICC central election authority (CEA) said that the electoral college of PCC delegates can be viewed at the state headquarters, while the consolidated list will be provided to candidates. KC Venugopal, AICC general secretary, rejected the demand and said, “This is an in-house procedure, and it is not supposed to be published for all the public to see. There is no such practice in Congress. We will continue to follow the old practice. How can there be a fair and free election without a publicly available electoral roll?
Essence of a fair and free process is the name and addresses of electors” Tiwari tweets. “Why should someone have to go to every PCC office in the country to find out who the electors are. This does not happen even in a club election.” Tharoor said, “I think it’s important everybody should know who can nominate and who can vote. There is nothing wrong with that”. Karti said, “Every election needs a well-defined and clear electoral college. The process of forming the electoral college must also be clear, well defined and transparent. An ad hoc electoral college is no electoral college.”
