Rahul picks CMs, with a little help from a personal message on portal

NEW DELHI: Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s choice of chief ministers in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh was at least partly driven by the choice of the party’s booth-level workers.

On Wednesday, even as the buzz around possible CMs increased in tenor, Gandhi asked the party’s data analytics department chairperson, Praveen Chakravarty, to quickly take inputs from workers using the party’s new data backbone, Shakti.

Soon, an audio message from

SHAKTI IS A NETWORK OF AROUND 4 MILLION BOOTH-LEVEL CONGRESS WORKERS. IT HELPS THE PARTY BRASS DIRECTLY INTERACT WITH DEDICATED WORKERS

Gandhi was beamed to 240,000 party workers in the three heartbelt states. In a recorded message, Gandhi sought a name for the states’ CM post and also thanked workers for their hard work in the recent elections. The workers were told to speak the name of their choice after a beep.

Party functionaries added that the audio message was not sent to all workers of these three states in the Shakti network but only to “people who worked hard” at the booth level. The party offers tasks through Shakti to judge the level of involvement of a booth-level worker with the party.

Nearly all 240,000 Congress workers responded to the message. The maximum response was sought from Rajasthan.

To be sure, as two senior Congress leaders confirmed on the condition of anonymity, Shakti results was not the sole criteria, but it was an important factor.