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Wednesday, Apr 21, 2010
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Women's quota in Youth Congress polls

K.P.M. Basheer

Election process begins in State unit with a four-week membership drive

Setting a precedent for other youth bodies
No firm date has been set for the ballot

KOCHI: Setting a precedent for the youth and student wings of other political parties, the Youth Congress has set apart women's quotas in its coming organisational elections in the State.

Though the number of women functionaries will vary at different levels of the organisational hierarchy, the Youth Congress leadership has insisted that there would be women officials at each of the levels. This is against the backdrop of the Women's Reservation Bill sponsored by the ruling Congress Party in Parliament.

The run-up to the organisational elections in the State, to be monitored by an independent outside agency, started on Tuesday with the launch of a four-week membership drive. Though no firm date has been set for the ballot, the three-member Youth Congress election commission indicated at a news conference here that it would take nearly three months to complete the pre-election process.

The commission members, who are themselves former senior Youth Congress office-bearers, said the elections would be free, fair and transparent. Prakash Joshi, one of the members, said that in order to ensure neutrality, all poll officers would be from outside Kerala and that all their expenses would be met by the national leadership, and not by the Kerala unit. The elections would be held at booth, mandalam, Assembly constituency, Lok Sabha constituency and State levels.

At each stage, there would be reservation for women and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/STs). For instance, at the mandalam level, of the four general secretaries to be elected, one would be an SC/ST representative and another a woman. Of the 10 delegates to be elected at the Assembly level, four would be reserved for women and the SC/STs. The representation of the SC/STs would be roughly 12.5 per cent.

Mr. Joshi, Jyothi Mani and S. Gunasekharan told journalists that the organisation hoped to rope in a large section of the youth to politics through the membership drive and encourage them to contest for leadership roles. The elections would be monitored by the Delhi-based Foundation for Advanced Management of Elections (FAME), a non-governmental organisation run by retired senior officers of the Election Commission of India. Elections had been completed in six States and the poll process is under way in eight others.

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