New Delhi: Days ahead of the Plenary Session at Raipur from February 24 to 26, Central Election Authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry on Friday said that he is ready to hold polls for the Congress Working Committee if asked to do so. “We are ready to hold the CWC elections if it is decided and the Congress president asks us to do so,” Mistry told ETV Bharat.
Accordingly, the CEA will soon get an updated list of the AICC delegates who will vote in the polls from the respective state units, said Mistry, adding that the total number of AICC delegates would be between 1,200 to 1,300. This would be done based on a formula that one AICC delegate is elected for every eight PCC delegates.
As head of CEA, Mistry had successfully conducted the polls in October last year in which Mallikarjun Kharge was elected the Congress president defeating Shashi Tharoor by a handsome margin. Around 9,000 PCC delegates had voted in the polls. During his presidential campaign and later too, Kharge had committed himself to hold elections for the crucial CWC, the most important body in the Congress system.
While the prime intention behind holding the presidential polls was to blunt the BJP’s charge that the Congress pursues dynastic politics, the move to hold internal polls also helped the grand old party project its democratic credentials vis a vis the ruling BJP, whose president JP Nadda got an extension recently without any such exercise.
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Since then, there has been intense speculation in the party over the issue. The last time the party witnessed the CWC elections was in 1997. “It was 25 years ago. That is a long time. Most of us have not witnessed that era,” quipped an AICC Secretary. When asked about his view on the benefits of holding the CWC polls, Mistry refrained from commenting but said that as head of CEA, he had a certain responsibility and was ready to shoulder it, if needed.
As per the party constitution, a Plenary Session is mandatory after the election of a new president, who gets an endorsement from the AICC delegates. The previous Plenary Session held in 2018 had endorsed Rahul Gandhi, who became party chief in December 2017. Rahul was elected unanimously as there was no contestant and hence no voting.
After endorsing the new party chief, a one-line resolution authorizing Rahul to nominate the CWC members was passed during the previous Plenary Session. However, this time the issue of whether to hold the CWC elections or not would be debated during the 47-member Steering Committee meeting which will be chaired by Kharge on the opening day of the session February 24 at Raipur.
According to Mistry, the CWC elections may be held at the Plenary Session venue and there would be no need to have an elaborate schedule for the exercise like it was done in the presidential polls. “It's like voting for the various parliamentary committees. The members go and vote even as the two houses are functioning. There would be no problem,” Mistry added.
