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When the results of the Congress presidential polls are announced on October 19, the grand old party of democratic India will get a leader from outside the Gandhi family, for the first time in 22 years. After weeks of debates and discussion, two contenders have emerged- Shashi Tharoor, the Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram and veteran Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge, who is also the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha.
Even as the average Indian is waiting to see who will take over the mantle of the country’s oldest party, TNM tells you how the Congress party president is elected. Will all members of the party vote or will the mandate be decided only by the leaders or legislators of the Congress? Before understanding how the party president is elected, it is important to understand the organisational structure of the Congress.
Like most political parties in India, the INC also has a hierarchical organisational structure which starts all the way from the booth level to the national level. The smallest functional unit of the party is the block committee at the grassroot/regional level, which elects members to the District Congress Committees (DCC) in the district/city, from where members are elected to the Pradesh Congress Committees (PCC) at the state level, all through secret ballot.
The All India Congress Committee (AICC) is the central decision making body of the INC and comprises of members elected from the state level PCCs, former presidents of the Congress party who completed a term of 365 days and continue to be active members of the Congress, leader of the Congress Party in Parliament, Leaders of the Congress Party in the Legislative Assemblies in Union Territories, state assemblies and others. Now, from all of this, how is the Congress president elected?
Election to the post of the president of the Congress party is guided by the laws mentioned in Article XVIII of the Congress constitution. The Returning officer, who is the Chairman of the Central Election Authority of the party, will publish the final names of the candidates contesting in the elections and circulate them with all the Pradesh Congress Committees.
And on the day fixed by the Congress Working Committee (in this case, October 17), each member of the Pradesh Congress Committee shall be entitled to cast their vote.
The others who are eligible to vote in the presidential polls include former PCC presidents who have completed a full term of 365 days and are active members of the party and a certain number of MLAs from each state. Number of MLAs cannot exceed more than 5% of the total members of the PCC or 15 MLAs.
According to Article XVIII, a delegate can cast his vote in the following manner: “On the voting paper which shall exhibit the names of the candidates, the delegate shall, if there are only two candidates, record his vote for one of them. The voting paper shall be deposited in a secret ballot-box provided for the purpose”. The Pradesh Congress Committee shall immediately forward the ballot boxes to the AICC. The votes are counted based on the principle of single transferable vote and the candidate with the highest number of votes is declared party president.
In the last 50 years of the Congress party, this kind of proper election for the post of party president was conducted only twice – in 2000 as well as in 1997. In 2000, Sonia Gandhi, the current president of the congress contested in the polls and won against Jitin Prasada, who is currently a cabinet minister in the UP government. Ever since then, Sonia Gandhi remained the head of the party except for a brief period between 2017 and 2019, when her son Rahul Gandhi took over the reins of the party.
Both Kharge and Tharoor filed their nominations on Friday, September 30. After filing his nomination, Kharge resigned as the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha following the ‘one person one post’ rule of the Congress party. Kharge is a senior leader from Karnataka, a 9-time MLA from Gulbarga in the state. Tharoor Is a three-time MP from the Thiruvananthapuram constituency in Kerala.