‘Our leader Rahul wants to end the high-command culture’
The Congress’s imagined game-changer—the party’s primaries style selection of 16 candidates for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections—has started rolling. Ironically, the first candidate to be selected through the process won in a walkover. Somen Mitra became the first Congress candidate to be selected through primaries from the North Kolkata constituency because he was the only one who had applied for the party ticket in the constituency. “The process was finalised at the Congress head office in Kolkata and we have sent the proposal of his name to the party in Delhi,” said Rudra Raju, one of the returning officers. In Guwahati constituency, Manas Bora, son of Assam’s Social Welfare Minister Akon Bora, was declared winner as he polled 410 of the total 823 votes.
Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad is monitoring the entire process. The Congress has engaged the services of Foundation for Advanced Management of Elections ( FAME), an NGO run by a few former election commissioners including J.M. Lyngdoh and T.S. Krishnamurthy. “Our people are not trained for this. With
FAME, we are trying to educate our people to conduct the elections independently in future,” says Ajay Maken, Congress communication department chief. Maken’s own seat, New Delhi, is now included in the primaries after he volunteered to get it listed following a mini revolt by two New Delhi MPs, Union ministers Kapil Sibal and Krishna Tirath, whose seats had initially been picked for the process. The new list includes Maken’s New Delhi and the North East Delhi constituency represented by Jai Prakash Agarwal. “Rahul Gandhi wants to set up a transparent system and end the high-command culture in the party. The central leadership has been deciding candidates for elections and appointing office bearers of the party. Rahulji wants to transfer this authority to the workers,” says Maken. Whether or not the new process ends the high-command culture, it will take Maken closer to the new high command, his leader Rahul Gandhi.
SOMEN MITRA IS THE FIRST CANDIDATE TO BE SELECTED THROUGH PRIMARIES.