Cong to elect new president by June
The Congress party will hold its internal polls to elect a new president this June, after the upcoming round of assembly elections, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) announced on Friday after brainstorming for at least three hours on internal polls as well as issues such as the farmers’ agitation and the alleged breach of national security as evident in the Whatsapp chat transcripts of journalist Arnab Goswami.
The Congress Election Authority (CEA), the party’s panel in charge of the elections, proposed a timeline between May 15 and 30 to hold organisational elections, although some leaders, particularly those in charge of poll-bound states, said this could clash with the assembly elections. CEA also proposed a schedule for the election of 12 members of the new CWC. At the end, the schedule for both the polls were left for the party president to decide.
If the CWC is eventually formed through an election, it will fulfil a key demand of the 23 signatories to an August letter to the Congress leadership, seeking sweeping changes in the party hierarchy. The last such election took place in 1997. CEA will meet again to decide if the new president will have a full term, or will serve the remainder of the current term that runs till December 2022.
The meeting saw some exchanges between Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot, and Anand Sharma and Ghulam Nabi Azad, two of the signatories
Silence from the govt’s side on what has been revealed has been deafening
On purported chat transcripts of journalist Arnab Goswami and TV ratings executive Partho Dasgupta
to the letter, over the need for an election. Sharma and Azad also wanted the schedule for the election to be decided at the meeting itself. “The Central Election Authority has already given a schedule for conducting election in May , but all CWC members unanimously requested the Congress president that it (party polls) should not affect the election prospects of the Congress party in assembly elections,” said party general secretary Randeep Surjewala, adding that “a little rescheduling will be needed” for the internal polls. Four states -- Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Assam -go to the polls in the first half of the year.
While Sharma and Azad stressed on the importance of internal polls, Gehlot said that the need of the hour is to fight against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and not internally. Gehlot said he had been in the party since 1973-74 but did not remember a time when there was a poll in CWC. Pointing out that BJP president JP Nadda or its former president Amit Shah were not elected, he said that for years people in the Congress had held party posts through nominations. Elections to CWC were held in Tirupati and Kolkata in 1993 and 1997 under the presidentship of PV Narsimha Rao and Sitaram Kesari respectively.
Sharma, who spoke much after Gehlot, complained that he was being targeted by Rajasthan CM, at which point Ambika Soni reminded him that no names had been taken. She said that the party president has been entrusted to decide the dates, and that the party constitution should be seen to determine how CWC is to be elected.
KC Venugopal, general secretary, organisation, later told the media, “As per our constitution, little clarities are needed for whether the elections for Congress president and working committee can be held together or working committee election should be held after the Congress president election.”