Congress to replicate Kerala booth model in Delhi

With former Lok Sabha member from Kerala P. C. Chacko on Wednesday being told by Congress president Sonia Gandhi to oversee the Delhi Assembly elections, he is planning to replicate the Kerala experiment of setting up booth committees in a one-hour State-wide exercise to energise a demoralised party unit.

After the Lok Sabha elections, Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee chief V. M. Sudheeran decided to set up booth committees and asked every party leader of the State including Chief Minister Oommen Chandy to go to their respective polling booth area at a designated hour on a particular day.

That this exercise would be undertaken was advertised asking Congress workers and well-wishers to be present. On the spot, over 20,000 booth committees were set up. As of date, Kerala has 21,548 booth committees.

At a meeting of the Pradesh or State Congress Committee (PCC) chiefs in the Capital last month to prepare for the organisational elections, there was consensus that such an exercise could help mobilise party workers demoralised by defeats in not just the Lok Sabha elections, but successive Assembly polls too.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation is that even if 10 people turned up for such an exercise in each of the 9.3 lakh polling booths of the Election Commission of India, it would add up to close to a crore workers at the grassroots level across the country.

Mr. Chacko plans to attempt this experiment in Delhi ahead of the elections in view of the oft-heard complaint that the Congress had not even distributed voters’ slips in the December 2013 Assembly elections and the Lok Sabha polls.

The formal order appointing Mr. Chacko as the All India Congress Committee in-charge of Delhi in place of general secretary Shakeel Ahmed – who has sought to be relieved to attend to personal matter – is likely to be issued on Friday after the party leadership firms up its mind on assigning the other States under the watch of the outgoing office-bearer.

After his meeting with the Congress president, Mr. Chacko was also scheduled to meet vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

If and how to involve three-term Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit remains an issue as her detractors insist that she comes with the baggage of scams, sources said.

Ms. Gandhi has tasked Mr. Chacko with not just managing the elections but setting up a party infrastructure in Delhi.