Madhusudan Mistry is the Congress Central Election Authority chairman. ANI.
New Delhi: In the run-up to the election for the post of the Congress president and barely hours after senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor met him on Wednesday to discuss his candidacy, Congress Central Election Authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry said that anyone was eligible to contest the polls provided he or she is a Congress delegate.
The election to choose the next Congress president will be held next month on 17 October while the counting of votes will be done on 19 October.
Some of the frontrunners who are likely to throw their hat into the ring are former diplomat and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor and Rajasthan chief minister and veteran party leader Ashok Gehlot. Reacting to Gehlot’s statement where the Rajasthan CM mentioned that he wanted to know if he could file his nomination and stay on his CM’s post at the same time, Mistry said, “It is mentioned in the Constitution that anyone can fight for the Presidential election, on the condition that he/she be a (Congress) delegate.”
Even as the clamour for Rahul Gandhi to take on the mantle of the party chief continues, the stage is perhaps now set for the Congress to get a non-Gandhi chairperson once again after decades. Sonia Gandhi is the current interim chief of the beleaguered Congress party, which has made headlines over the past few months for its bunch of resignations and the frequency with which top leaders have quit the party.
Clearing any ambiguity over who can contest to be the next chief of the Congress party, Mistry said, “Those who want to want to fight the election (for Congress President) can get the signature of 10 delegates and file their nomination. Voting for election will be done on 17 October and the counting will be done on 19 October 2022.”
Earlier in a joint letter to Mistry dated September 6, Congress Lok Sabha members Shashi Tharoor, Manish Tewari, Karti Chidambaram, Pradyut Bordoloi and Abdul Khaleque had demanded that a list must be made available to members in order to verify who is entitled to nominate a candidate and who is entitled to vote for the post of the Congress chief.
Electors and candidates cannot be expected to go to all 28 Pradesh Congress Committees (PCCs) and nine union territorial units across India to verify the electoral rolls, the MPs had said in their communication to Mistry.
The letter to the Congress Central Election Authority chairman emerged in the public domain a day after the Congress party launched its ambitious ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ helmed by Rahul Gandhi, aimed at mobilising party workers and leaders from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.
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