Congress fast-tracks Delhi civic poll list after system crash setback

New Delhi: After a few days of sleepless nights over the crashing of its control room, the Delhi Congress has fast-tracked the process of selection of its candidates for the upcoming municipal elections in the national capital. The party is all set to announce its first list of candidates within days after the State Election Commission notifies the poll dates.

It all began with Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken’s decision to go paperless in the selection process of its candidates for the civic polls. The party put up 14 sealed boxes for each district for applicants with the rider that they should drop in their applications and bio-data in the form of pen drives only.

As the party’s IT professionals started uploading the bio-data of the applicants, their computers crashed as many of the pen drives were carrying different viruses. Initially, the party leaders suspected that some applicants had played mischief by providing infected pen drives. Later, they came to know that only those devises were infected which the applicants had uploaded either from cyber cafes or other private entities. The problem was finally fixed and the process of selection of the candidates was fast tracked.

What’s significant is the fact that this time the party has decided to choose candidates on the basis of the feedback of its workers, block and district heads, and other local leaders of the respective wards. The party reportedly received 10,400-odd applications for 272 municipal wards.

Asked how the party would be taking feedback from its workers, senior local leader Chattar Singh said that each applicant had to submit a list of five party workers from each polling booth of his/her municipal ward. He said that the applicants had submitted the names of 94,000 party workers, who are being contacted by the control room for proper feedback on each candidate.

There are about 13,000 polling booths in the city. The party will reportedly be designating about seven workers as its agents in each polling booth. That means, one polling agent will be responsible for about 30 households in his/her respective municipal ward.

The party has been using all its might and resources to make a comeback in the three municipal bodies which are under the rule of the BJP for 10 consecutive years. In the 272 municipal wards, Congress has only 88 corporators. Sources said that Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi’s Ramlila Maidan rally on Tuesday is an attempt to generate momentum among its workers for the coming municipal polls which are expected in mid April.

What’s more important for Congress is that it will be facing both BJP and AAP in these polls. The AAP had made an electrifying performance by winning 67 of the 70 Assembly seats.

The Congress could not win a single Assembly seat even after ruling the city for 15 consecutive years. The party could not even retain any of its seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi. All the seven parliamentary seats were won by BJP.

However, what came as a solace to Congress was its impressive performance in the recent municipal by-elections. Of the 13 municipal wards, the party was able to win four seats. While five wards were swept by AAP, one of the independent candidates later joined Congress. BJP was able to wrest control of only three wards.