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An internal democratic and competitive way of selecting candidates within the party, the primary elections had failed to work during the Lok Sabha elections. Rahul Gandhi now wants to implement it on a trial basis. Renu Mittal reports
Congress Vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s office has sent out letters to all party district headquarters asking them to choose one block where primary style elections could be held to elect the block president.
This is being done on a trial basis along the lines of the one conducted for the Lok Sabha elections. At that time, 15 constituencies were selected in various states but the experiment failed to work and none of those selected in the primaries won the election.
Sources say that one block will be selected in each district and the primaries will be held. If the experiment is successful it will be carried onto other blocks and districts, and expanded to the rest of the party.
Rahul Gandhi has been a advocate of elections within the organisation and has been holding elections in the youth Congress and the National Students' Union of India. However, some Congress leaders feel these elections have been counterproductive. They claim that large amount of money is pumped in to win the polls.
The Congress party’s central election committee headed by president Sonia Gandhi met on Friday to select candidates for the coming assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra and Haryana. Rahul Gandhi was absent from the meeting as he was away on a two-day trip to his constituency, Amethi.
Many are questioning if Rahul Gandhi is interested in the selection of candidates and the running of the party.
It was at his command that secretaries of the All India Congress Committee took on the old guard of the party for speaking out of turn. They dashed off a letter expressing their discomfort at the manner in which the affairs of the AICC was being conducted.