Perform or perish. That’s what Rahul Gandhi has told Congress leaders in the run up to the elections in five states in November. But will his party shed its old habits? Renu Mittal reports
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi has decided to lay out the guidelines for the screening and selection of candidates for the five states which go to the polls in November this year.
While the screening committees of the five states were announced a month ago along with the party reshuffle, Rahul convened a meeting of these committees, minus the Congress Legislature Party leaders and Pradesh Congress Committee presidents, to discuss and finalize guidelines for the selection of candidates.
So far despite the high sounding intentions, the process has been quite loose and fluid, and no specific criteria have been followed or evolved with the chief ministers and the general secretaries getting their way in taking arbitrary out-of-the-line decisions.
For example, if the decision is not to give tickets to anyone who has lost twice, it is almost certain there would be exceptions and a large number of guidelines are normally violated as was the case in Karnataka.
Rahul appears to be in favour of setting out guidelines in the presence of the members who would be selecting the candidates as well as getting their feedback on the situation in the states and whether the party can afford to take tough decisions in its selection of candidates.
Ajay Maken, the chairman for the screening committee for Rajasthan, attended the meeting with Rahul along with general secretary in charge Gurudas Kamat and committee member R S Khuntia.
Senior Rajasthan leader and AICC general secretary C P Joshi also attended the meeting in his capacity as Chhattisgarh screening committee chairman along with general secretary Hari Prasad and member Manik Tagore.
Madhusudan Mistry is chairman of the Madhya Pradesh screening committee and Mohan Prakash is the general secretary.
Narayanswamy is the Delhi screening committee chairman. He deputy and general secretary, Shakeel Ahmed is out of the country.
In most elections there is usually a clamour to remove discredited MLAs or those who do not work or those who are seen to be losing the elections and bring in fresh faces, but usually the party ends up talking the line of least resistance and nominates most, almost all sitting MLAs to be repeated irrespective of whether they are in a position to win or lose.
This happened in Rajasthan during Ashok Gehlot’s first term as chief minister when there was huge anti-incumbency against a large number of MLAs and according to a survey it was recommended that many of these MLAs should be dropped to cut the anti-incumbency tag the government was saddled with.
But Ashok Gehlot had his way and most of the MLAs were retained. The result? The Gehlot government was voted out by a big margin and the BJP came back to power.
While earlier Rahul was a peripheral player, not taking part in key decision making, this time he has not only appointed the new AICC team but is also interacting regularly with state leaders and general secretaries in charge to put a sense of urgency and energy back in the party and its leaders.
He has given them 3 months time to perform or perish, and it will be clear after that period whether he was making idle threats or really means business.
Another issue which always comes up is that of giving tickets to relatives but here again, in the last minute, all sons, daughters, nephews and wives is finally adjusted, as happened in the recent Karnataka elections.
Rahul will need to take a call on this issue also and it remains to be seen whether the decision will be strictly implementable.
While Rahul’s focus is more and more on young candidates, party leaders say that the old guard cannot be ignored or sidelined and the party cannot ignore caste, region, religion, women, Dalits, minorities and that a balance needs to be taken.
The screening committees will begin meeting from August in line with the A K Antony committee recommendation to announce candidates earlier so that they get some time to campaign and find their feet. Normally, Congress candidates are announced on the last day of nominations amidst confusion and chaos.
