Cong announces organisational poll schedule

Amid talk that Rahul Gandhi will be anointed as the party chief, AICC today announced a new schedule for organisational elections in which the next Congress President will be elected by September 30.
A highlight of the new schedule is that for the first time, party polls will be held in two phases, first phase covering 18 states and Union territories and the second phase almost equal number of states and Union territories.
Interestingly, the party elections will be over by July 31 in 18 states including Gujarat, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala and a host of states in North-east in the first phase.

The second phase will cover Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Punjab, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Telangana.
The Congress chief will be elected by September 30.
Sonia Gandhi has created a record of having the longest tenure at the helm of the oldest political party when she completed 17 years as Congress President on March 14.

She took the top party post amid a complete collapse in 1998 replacing the late Sitaram Kesri at a time when the party had faced a crisis with the BJP in the ascendence.
The organisational polls are being held at a time when the Congress has faced its worst debacle in the Lok Sabha polls in May 2014 after being at the top for a decade since coming to power in 2004. It could manage just 44 seats in the last Lok Sabha elections.

Organisational elections are being held when the talk is growing in the party that sooner rather than later Sonia Gandhi will pass the mantle to her son Rahul Gandhi, who was made the Congress Vice President in January 2013 at the Jaipur Chintan Shivir.
The schedule which was finalised by the Central Election Authority of the party headed by senior leader Mullappally Ramachandran was released by AICC General Secretary Janardan Dwivedi.