Karti Chidambaram backs Manish Tewari, says every election requires a well-defined electoral college
Karti Chidambaram backs Manish Tewari, says every election requires a well-defined electoral college
Lok Sabha member and senior Congress leader Manish Tewari reacted sharply to Madhusudan Mistry’s remarks regarding the Congress Presidential election on 31 August.
On Tuesday, Mr Mistry, who heads the Congress’s Central Election Authority (CEA), told Hindu That no one should doubt the fairness of the electoral process and said that the names of the representatives, who make up the 9,000-strong electoral college of the presidential election, can be traced to the respective Pradesh Congress Committees (PCCs) or state units. ,
In a series of tweets, Mr Tewari said the voter list should be transparent and publicly available on the party’s website.
“With great respect @MD_Mistry ji how can there be fair and free elections without publicly available voter list? The essence of a fair and open process is that the names and addresses of voters should be published on the @INCIndia website in a transparent manner,” he said, tagging Hindu news report.
Mr Tewari, who is a member of the G-23 ginger group that has been pushing for internal reforms in the Congress for the past two years, questioned why anyone should visit PCC offices to find out “who the voters are”. and he insisted that such things do not even happen in “club elections”.
“In the interest of fairness and transparency, I urge your God Himself to publish the complete list of voters on @INCIndia website. How can one even consider running if one does not know who the voters are. If someone has to file his nomination and it has to be proposed by 10 Congressmen as per the requirement, CEA can reject it saying that they are not valid voters,” he said.
The issue of voter list not being made public was raised by another G-23 leader Anand Sharma in the Congress Working Committee (CWC) last Sunday, when the final program was approved with a show of hands.
“Every election requires a well defined and clear electorate. The process of constitution of the electoral college should also be clear, well defined and transparent. An ad-hoc electoral college is not an electoral college,” said Lok Sabha member Karti P. Chidambaram said.
Although no public announcement has yet been made by the G-23, Hindu was told that the Lok Sabha member Shashi Tharoor may contest the upcoming presidential election If he manages to get the support of a “critical mass of leaders”.
Mr Tharoor is also a G-23 member, although he is said to be considering his own electoral move independent of the group.
On 30 August, prominent G-23 leaders such as Mr. Sharma, Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Prithviraj Chavan met in Delhi to strategize about the upcoming presidential elections and later met the former Congress veteran, Ghulam Nabi Azad, who left the party last Friday,