On Wednesday Congress MP and G-23 leader Manish Tewari raised concerns about the fairness of the upcoming polls for the elections of the party’s new president. He asked the party to make the names of electors for the party president poll public. He said that the names must be made public on the AICC web portal to ensure full transparency and fairness. Tewari also raised an objection on why anyone who is seeking to contest the Congress president’s elections should go to the PCC office for getting the electoral roll. He added that this does not even happen in a club election.  

He further posted a series of tweets wherein he reacted to a statement made by Madhusudan Mistry who is the senior Congress leader and the chief of its central election authority (CEA). “With great respect @MD_Mistry Ji How can there be a fair & free election without a publicly open electoral roll? The importance of a fair & free process is that the names & addresses of electors must be transparently published on @INCIndia website,” Manish Tewari’s tweet read which was in reaction to Mistry’s statement to the newspaper that ‘the list is not made public but if a member of our party wants to go through, then they can go and check at the PCC (Pradesh Congress Committee) office. 

Tewari’s tweet came at a crucial time when various questions are being raised over the Congress’s presidential elections. Even the former party veteran Ghulam Nami Azad who left the party on August 26 with a letter to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has multiple concerns regarding presidential elections. Additionally, in recent days it has been observed that Tewari and a few other members have been taking a different stand on issues than the party. 

The next Congress presidential elections are due to take place on October 17 and the results will be announced two days later. Sonia Gandhi, who handed up the reins to her son, Rahul Gandhi, in December 2017, returned as party chief in July 2019 after resigning in the aftermath of the ruling BJP’s thrashing in that year’s general elections, the party’s second consecutive defeat. She earlier headed Congress from March 1998 to December 2017.

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