New DelhiAs demand for transparency in elections for Congress president’s post is gaining ground, party MP from Assam Pradyut Bordoloi has become the latest member to call for making the electoral rolls public.
Bordoloi on Thursday wrote a letter to the Congress’s Central Election Authority (CEA) chief Madhusudan Mistry on the issue. Naugaon representative Manish Tewari is the fourth Congress MP after Karti Chidambaram and Shashi Tharoor to have made this demand.
This demand was first made by senior party leader Anand Sharma in the Congress Working Committee meeting last month.
Sonia Gandhi has been the interim president of the Indian National Congress (INC) since 2019, ever since Rahul Gandhi – who was elected unopposed in 2017 – resigned following the party’s poor performance in the last Lok Sabha elections.
The party is now set to hold its next presidential election on October 17, and the demand to make the electoral rolls public comes three weeks before filing nominations on September 24.
In a tweet on Wednesday, Tewari argued that if a candidate needs to be supported by 10 electors to file his nomination – as per the Congress constitution – the lack of a public electoral roll is the CEA’s rules that the nominators are, then They may be disqualified. Not a genuine voter.
1/1 with great respect @MD_mistry How can there be fair and free elections without publicly available electoral rolls? The essence of the fair and open process should be published in the name and address of the electorate @INCIndia website in a transparent manner. https://t.co/7lRqSwqseV
— Manish Tewari (@ManishTewari) 31 August 2022
In response to these demands, Mistry and the party leadership Asked Earlier this week, the concerned leaders were asked to visit each state unit or Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) of the party and collect voter list from them.
Tiwari and others hit back saying that going to the party’s 28 PCC and 9 union territory units to check the electoral roll for any potential candidate is a huge task.
ThePrint looks at the process of electing Congress presidents and the reasons behind the current controversy over electoral rolls.
How is the Congress President elected?
According to Article XVIII of the Congress Constitution, the Congress party represents the votes for the president.
The Constitution defines “all members of State Congress Committees (PCCs)” as INC representatives.
According to the party constitution, there are six ways in which a person can become a PCC member.
First, each Block Congress Committee (BCC) elects a representative to the PCC through a system of secret ballot. This representative becomes a member of the PCC.
Other PCC members include PCC presidents who have completed a full term of 365 days and remain members of the party, are presidents of District Congress Committees (DCCs) – although such members are not eligible to be secretary or president of their respective PCCs. Huh. All India Congress Committee (AICC) members who reside in the state, members elected by the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) in all states (the number of such members cannot exceed 5 per cent or 15 members) of any PCC total membership), and members who choose from among PCC executive “special elements” or special categories, are not adequately represented in the PCC.
These PCC members – or INC representatives – elect the Congress president from among the nominated candidates.
Any 10 delegates may jointly propose the name of another representative for the post of Congress President. The Returning Officer for the election – who is the chairman of the CEA – then sends the list of nominated representatives to each state unit or PCC of the party after waiting seven days to allow the nominated candidates to withdraw their nominations.
If there is only one candidate left after the date of withdrawal, that representative is automatically elected as the Speaker.
If not, each Congress votes for its preferred candidate. If there are only two candidates, the delegates select one. If there are more than two candidates, representatives indicate their preference for at least two of the total number of candidates.
The process of election, if there is more than one candidate, takes place at the PCC headquarters of each state.
The votes are counted according to the principle of single transferable vote and the candidate who receives the most votes is declared the party president.
Congress Presidential Elections So Far
In the past 50 years, congressional presidential elections have truly been held only twice.
The last time a presidential election with more than one candidate was held was in 2000 when Sonia Gandhi faced Jitin Prasada. Gandhi won that election with 7,448 votes against Prasad’s 94.
Earlier, an election in which more than one candidate was in the fray was in 1997, when Sitaram Kesari defeated veterans Sharad Pawar and Rajesh Pilot. While Kesari got 6,224 votes, Pawar got 882 and Pilot got 354 votes.
Sonia Gandhi was appointed president unopposed in 1998 and after that from 2000 onwards, there has been no challenge to the Gandhi family when it comes to the presidency of the party.
Sonia remained the party’s president until 2017, when her son and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was elected unopposed as president, even before she filed her nomination with all PCCs passing a resolution in her favor.
When Rahul resigned, Sonia was appointed interim president by the Congress Working Committee (CWC).
Why the demand to make the voter list public?
According to the Congress constitution, organizational elections in the party are held every five years – from the block level to the district level, for the PCC and AICC.
A large section of the PCC members that make up the electoral college for the presidential election are elected by the BCC members.
However, organizational elections – by BCC members for the BCC and for the PCC – have not been held in Congress since 2017, meaning that PCC members who come as BCC representatives make up a substantial part of the electoral college for the presidential election. Nominated through discussion and consensus and not elected by due process.
According to AICC sources, there are around 9,000 PCC members in the electoral college this time. In the absence of an electoral process, it is difficult for any presidential candidate to know who from each of the BCCs has been nominated as a PCC member and hence become an elector.
Tiwari and others argue that if this list is not made public, a candidate will not know by whom they may be nominated.
Congress, on the other hand, has said that it will not make the list public and those who want to know who constitutes the electoral college will have to visit each PCC and get the names personally.
(Edited by Polomi Banerjee)
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