New Delhi:The stage was set for the Congress internal polls on Friday with the party completing its membership drive for the exercise to be held in July. The internal polls are important as they will culminate with the election of the new party president in August. Sonia Gandhi has been holding an interim charge as party chief since 2019, when Rahul owned up responsibility for the party’s national polls loss and resigned as Congress chief.
Rahul was elected the party president in 2017. After the party lost the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, a group of senior leaders, who came to be known as the G23, had demanded internal elections in a letter they wrote to Sonia Gandhi in 2020. The G23 had demanded that internal elections for all party posts should be held at the earliest to strengthen the party down to the booth level.
One of the issues flagged by them was bogus membership, which limited the party’s chances of mobilising the voters at the booth level, something the rival BJP excelled at. Sonia had then decided to take the challenge head-on and hold internal elections, which were scheduled to be held last year but had to be postponed due to the pandemic.
In fact, Rahul was behind the idea to go in for digital membership, which has brought both quantitative and qualitative transparency to the organization, said, party leaders. On November 1, 2021, Rahul was one of the first Congress leaders to be enrolled as a digital member. In a first for the 137-year-old party, the Congress added 2.6 crore, new members, through the digital membership drive that concluded on Friday, while another 3 crore members were enrolled manually.
AICC general secretary organization KC Venugopal enrolled Sonia Gandhi on Friday and handed over her new identity card to be used in the coming internal elections, which are significant for the Congress, which has suffered a series of electoral reverses since 2014 and is now ruling only in two states Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.
"It is a matter of happiness that the digital membership drive has evinced great interest from people of the country, especially younger supporters of the Congress party. We appreciate the role played by Praveen Chakravarty, Chairman, AICC Data Analytics department in providing the necessary support in making the exercise successful," said Venugopal.
“For the first time in the party's history, it had embarked on a digital membership drive that will now form the basis for internal elections as well as organization building,” he said. The membership drive provided an opportunity for the opposition party to reach out to its supporters at all booths in all assembly segments across the country.
“These are all verified members, enrolled into the party by a designated enroller using a proprietary mobile phone app called Congress Membership App,” said Chakravarty. Every digital member after verification will get a digital ID card that is QR coded for authenticity. A network of over 5 lakh party approved enrollers went door to door to enrol members across the length and breadth of the country. "Every member is verified at three levels, voter ID, photograph and phone number. The drive is strictly access controlled and only verified enrollers can use the membership app," said Chakravarty.
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