The 27-member Delhi Pradesh Election Committee of the Congress, which was constituted earlier this month, is expected to come up with a formula for selection of candidates for the upcoming Assembly elections. The Committee, headed by Pradesh Congress Committee president J.P. Agarwal and has among others Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, party spokesperson Ajay Maken, Union Ministers Kapil Sibal and Krishna Tirath, Congress general secretary Janardan Dwivedi, and Delhi MPs Sandeep Dikshit, Ramesh Kumar, Mahabal Mishra and Pervez Hashmi as its members, is expected to devise a methodology for identifying the most suitable candidates for every Assembly segment.
Considering that in the civic body elections, the task of identifying the candidates had been delegated to teams led by the MPs and the MLAs and losing candidates in each Assembly segment, the party workers are wondering how the party would go about the task this time round.
“Already eight to 10 surveys have been done by the party. One wonders if they would help in identifying the right candidates,’’ said a senior leader.
While Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit is expected to play a major role in the selection as the election is being fought on her ‘face’ and her government’s performance over the last 15 years, the MPs are also expected to play a significant role. But this has perturbed many of those MLAs who do not get along well with their MPs as they fear that attempts might be made to sabotage their candidature. “Obviously the MPs would have the Lok Sabha elections in mind and would not want their arch rivals to do well in the Assembly polls and then pose a threat to their candidature in the 2014 elections,’’ said a senior party leader.
Party sources said Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had also appointed seven observers, one for every parliamentary constituency, and they would be coming up with their names of candidates before the election panel.
It would then be up to the senior party leaders to take a call on these names.
