Success of Cong primaries to be tested

The first-ever US style 'primaries' in the country's electoral history has evoked mixed reactions from party

The hordes of eager ticket seekers milling around the offices of general-secretaries and screening committee heads in New Delhi are completely missing and, instead, it's an orderly group of people assembled at the local Congress office to file their nominations for the talked about Congress 'Primaries'.

The unique 'pilot project' being implemented across 16 Lok Sabha constituencies to select Congress candidates is the brainchild of party vice-president Rahul Gandhi. The first US style 'primaries' in the country's electoral history have, however, evoked mixed reactions from the Congress fold.

Till date, through this process, candidates have been finalised for five Lok Sabha seats - Guwahati, Sant Kabir Nagar (Uttar Pradesh), Indore (Madhya Pradesh) Kolkata Uttar (West Bengal ) and Bikaner. Declaration of candidates for all the constituencies have to be completed by March 15.

Congress party workers, including office bearers right down to the district, block and Panchayat levels, are the voters who elect their candidates through a detailed process of scrutiny, nomination and then election.

Since the time the names of these "select" constituencies for this experiment were made public, there were protests from many of these constituencies, with Gandhi ultimately having to change several of them. Both sitting Union ministers Kapil Sibal and Krishna Tirath objected to their constituencies being chosen; finally, New Delhi and North East Delhi were taken up for the primaries. North Bangalore and Dakshin Kannada, too, had local Congressmen appealing to Gandhi to exempt their seats as it would create fissures within the local party unit.

A Congressman, who was involved in the election process in Guwahati, however, points out: "It's senior party leaders who don't have direct touch with party workers at the ground level who seem to object to this system. They are used to using their clout with the top leaders in New Delhi, where tickets are finalised, to bag their tickets."

Sitting Member of Parliament (MP) and former Union minister Ajay Maken is the single nominee from the New Delhi constituency. With no contest on the cards, the process here is likely to be the same that was followed to select Somen Mitra from Kolkata Uttar (he has returned to the Congress fold after a stint with the Trinamool Congress). The single candidate enunciates his vision at a party workers' convention, after which he is declared elected.

A section within the Congress questions the efficacy of the new system that was meant to be game changer. They ask: "What's the use of these primaries if the same familiar names are going to again be the candidates?"

Defending the system, Prakash Joshi, Congress secretary and the man incharge of implementation of the primaries, says: "The intention was to let party workers have a say in distribution of tickets. If they have decided unanimously on a single candidate, how can we find a fault with that?"