Rahul: Only 2 from a family can get ticket

Congress leaders now will find it difficult to ask tickets for their wives, sons, daughters and near and dear one as party vice-president Rahul Gandhi is said to be against fielding more than two persons from the same family in the coming Assembly polls. According to the sources, Mr Gandhi has directed party officials dealing with Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh Assembly polls, to follow the Karnataka model of selecting nominees. “Rahulji is for decentralisation of power in the organisation. Therefore, recommendation of candidates coming from bloc, teshil, district and state Congress committees will be taken seriously. The AICC’s central election committee cannot decide the nominees ignoring recommendations from states,” they said. Moreover, influential leaders pressing tickers for their protégés will have to give it in writing to Mr Gandhi that they should be held responsible if their nominee lose the seats. Mr Gandhi has now realised that the party candidates cannot win elections merely on the Congress symbol or in the name of state and central leaders. They have to be involved in an organisational network in the state. If the Congress has made corruption and price rise an issue against the BJP governments in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the saffron party is using the same trick against the Congress governments in Rajasthan and Delhi. The Congress and the BJP cannot afford to renominate all their sitting legislators in the four states. But those who fail to get tickets would turn rebels and thereby could damage their respective parties. The Congress is in a double mind whether or not to make chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan the main target of its attack in the Madhya Pradesh polls. If it intensifies the attack then the BJP rank and file could be demoralised but it can also create sympathy for him and consolidate the BJP, they fear. As for Chhattisgarh is concerned, the Congress managers appear to have managed the former chief minister Ajit Jogi assuring that his wife and son could be fielded for the Assembly and he would be made a member of Parliament. Mr Jogi said he would go by the wishes of party chief Sonia Gandhi on the issue of contesting polls.