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Madhusudan Mistry, All India Congress Committee general-secretary in charge of Karnataka, played a pivotal role in ensuring the Congress victory in the state. He speaks to Kavita Chowdhury on the factors that contributed to the party’s stellar performance in the southern state. Edited excerpts:
The Congress has succeeded in bagging a massive victory in Karnataka. However, the victory is being described more as a vote against the Bharatiya Janata Party and not so much as a vote for the Congress.
It’s only Congress critics who are saying this, calling it a ‘negative effect’ vote. Why can’t they appreciate the fact that the people of Karnataka have reposed faith in the Congress and voted for a stable government, good governance, and good leadership?
How important was the factor of ticket distribution in this victory. There were several complaints, with some cases even filed in court.
Those complaints were isolated instances; of 224 seats, there were no complaints in the first list of 177 candidates, but there were some in the next list of 40 candidates. The choice of Anil Lad, who had lost the last election by 1,200 votes was questioned. But he has won. Similarly, much fuss was made about the choice of two sons of ministers. There were even allegations of money demands. However, till date, not one case has been proved.
This time, in fact, ticket distribution was done after intense scrutiny and indepth inquiry, even taking the help of independent agencies to conduct surveys. We went down right to the block and district level in every constituency, getting the opinion from the block and district presidents in writing, without any intermediaries about their choice of candidates.
What role did Rahul Gandhi as Congress vice-president play in this poll?
He played a very crucial role. He addressed nine meetings. He was part of the consultation process on candidate selection and was keeping a daily tab on the activities in Karnataka.
Of course, everything is done as per the central election coordination committee under the chairmanship of Congress President Sonia Gandhi.
Among the strategies that Congress adopted for the polls, were there any firsts?
Perhaps this is for the first time that we had a coordination and monitoring committee to coordinate these elections. It was very useful in this election. It played a great role in resolving disputes between rebel candidates at the time of ticket distribution.
(The committee was headed by defence minister A K Antony, and had Ambika Soni, Vayalar Ravi, Luizinho Faleiro, Jitendra Singh, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee chief G Parameshwar, Congress Legislature Party leader Siddaramaiah, and Mistry as members.)
Congress seems to have a problem of plenty with many leaders eyeing the chief minister’s post...
Congress has had a tradition of elected representatives - the MLAs -- choosing their leader and they shall be meeting at the earliest to choose their leader.
