The new compressed schedule for organisational elections in the Congress is unlikely to allow actual elections. Some of party president Sitaram Kesris dectractors in the party insist that the process will essentially consist of nominations.
The party repeatedly postponed the elections beyond the deadlines set by the Election Commission. After the commission refused to allow its last bid to postpone the elections till mid-July, the party has fixed a compressed schedule, according to which the elections are to end by mid-June.
Only pradesh returning officers have been appointed so far. The electoral rolls have not been published and scrutiny committees to examine complaints about the rolls have not been established, a former Union minister close to Rao pointed out yesterday.
He added that it would take another week for district returning officers to be appointed. The first elections, at the primary level, are scheduled to begin on Friday, though, and elections at the block level are due on May 20.
Clearly, without electoral rolls or returning officers, the process will turn into some form of nomination. They will choose persons at every level in consultation with whomever they have decided to make the PCC president, said the Rao aide.
The process of party elections normally takes about three months, if it is properly conducted. The last time elections were held in the Congress was 1991-1992, some months after Rao took charge of the party.
Rao repeatedly postponed elections thereafter. The current round of elections were forced by the election commission. Under T N Seshan, the previous Chief Election Commissioner, it had threatened to derecognise political parties that did not hold internal elections as per their constitutions. The original deadline was December 31, 1995. It has been repeatedly extended.
