Congress president P V Narasimha Rao's decision to appoint Dhawan as a general secretary of the AICC was announced by Suresh Kalmadi, the Congress parliamentary party's official spokesman, at the party headquarters yesterday. Dhawan, who is the seventh AICC general secretary, will look after the organisational elections, Kalmadi said.
Other AICC general secretaries are Devendra Dwivedi, Janardhana Poojary, Madhavsinh Solanki, B P Maurya, Sudhakarrao Naik and Ahmed Patel. None of them was found fit to tackle this tricky task of completing organisational elections.
Ahmed Patel does not enjoy the party president's confidence due to his frequent hobnobbing with dissidents. As of now, Devendra Dwivedi is the closest to Rao. The loyalty of other four are not in doubt but none of them is known to be an artful go-getter as RK Dhawan.
Possibly Rao realises that even relatively strong general secretaries like Vasantrao Patil, CM Stephan and GK Moopanar had found it helpless to deal with the conflicting claims by the warring faction leaders determined to capture the units right from primary, block, district and pradesh levels. Mostly, the process got stuck at the district level.
The allegations of bogus membership and rigging had always frustrated the efforts by Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi to conduct the organisational elections. After Nijalingappa, Narasimha Rao alone could complete the election process without diluting the process in 1992. Before the fall of Rao government, ill-fated moves were made to hold another election but it failed to take off beyond the first stage of membership enrolment
This time the Congress is forced to complete the process before the year-end to avert derecognition of the party by the Election Commission. The latter had imposed this condition on all political parties recognised at the national and state levels.
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The challenge before Dhawan, who is being given the services of a strong secretarial staff led by an aging AICC apparatchik who had the experience of the elections during the Nijalingappa days, is not confined to bulldoze the rigging and bogus membership claims. He has to ensure that Narasimha Rao is re-elected as Congress president with an overwhelming support if not unanimously.
If this could be achieved in the next four months without being seen as having done through manipulation, it will greatly help keep up the image of Rao as the undisputed leader despite all the allegations of corruption against him. This will also put at rest the dissidents' demand for a change of leadership.
R K Dhawan will also have to ensure that all known detractors of Narasimha Rao like Rajesh Pilot, K Karunakaran, Balram Jakhar and their supporters at state levels are not able to get any organisational control. This is going to be a fitting reply to the detractors of Rao.
Apart from settling scores with the rebels, Rao's factional interests in states will also have to be taken care of. It is common during the organisational election for the state satraps to control the units and emerge as challengers to even the central authority. Rao can confidently rely on Dhawan's manipulative skills to bring forth a 'balanced' leadership.
Dhawan will also have to keep records of the elections right from the primary membership forms to the Congress president's election