The Hindu : National : It's time to conduct party polls

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Monday, Jun 28, 2004

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National

It's time to conduct party polls

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JUNE 27. After the general elections, it is time for both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party to turn attention for the conduct of organisational polls, a process the Election Commission follows seriously.

The Congress plans to move to the Election Commission seeking an extension of the August 31 deadline set by it to complete the process of organisational polls that got delayed on account of the recent Lok Sabha polls.

Although the tenure of the current set of office-bearers was over during March this year, the party had sought an extension from the Election Commission since it was busy preparing for the general elections.

The Election Commission had acceded to the request and gave time till end of August to complete the process.

But with just two months remaining the party is nowhere near even in approaching the organisational election as it is yet to fix a date for the completion of enrolment, leave alone the other exercise of conducting polls from block-level upwards till the AICC.

In view of the time required, the party Central Election Authority, headed by senior leader Ram Niwas Mirdha plans to approach the Election Commission seeking an extension. Mr. Mirdha told The Hindu that he was waiting for the reshuffle being carried out in the AICC after which he would draw up a timetable for conducting the polls.

The current set of office-bearers led by AICC president Sonia Gandhi assumed charge at the March 2001 Bangalore Plenary and its term ceases at the end of three years. Mr. Mirdha said the current set of appointments including those as presidents of the Pradesh Congress Committees (made during the last one week like Kerala, Orissa and Maharashtra) were "interim arrangements'' and the incumbents would have to seek re-election as per the schedule drawn by the Congress Election Authority.

Unlike the Congress, several State units of the Bharatiya Janata Party have completed their organisational elections - and the national president, M. Venkaiah Naidu, was also elected. Yet there are 9 or 10 States that have not completed the process.

At the recently concluded session of the party's national executive committee in Mumbai, Mr. Naidu had announced that he was asking all State units to complete the process by August-end. Among the States where elections have yet to be completed are the four of the five States where Assembly elections were held late last year (and as a result the organisational elections were kept in abeyance) - Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh - and others such as Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Orissa, Jharkhand and Mizoram where the process was started and is yet to be completed.

One significant aspect of the party's organisational elections this time is that till today not a single contested election was held. All positions, from the block to the district, from the State to the national level, were decided on the basis of "consensus''. Senior party leaders were of the view that this helped prevent bitterness and factionalism.

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