Congress gears up for 2019, to select 13k booth chiefs

NEW DELHI: Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress has started appointing presidents for each of the 13,800 polling booths in the national capital. Each booth president will have 10 associates to discharge different duties to manage their booths during the coming Parliamentary elections.

Confirming this, senior Congress leader Chatter Singh said that the party has already appointed presidents in 69 per cent polling booths. He said even  associates have been selected for the city’s 60 per cent polling stations.

It is reliably learnt that  the Congress has already carried out this exercise in 86 per cent booths in Adarsh Nagar, 84 per cent in Chandni Chowk, 70 per cent in Krishna Nagar, 68 per cent in Karol Bagh, 70 per cent in New Delhi, 84 per cent in Rohini, 96 per cent in Kirari, 43 per cent in Tilak Nagar, 44 per cent in Najafgarh, 76 per cent in Mehrauli, 51 per cent in Badarpur and cent per cent in Patparganj. The party expects to complete the entire excise in the next four days.

The selection of the booth presidents and their associates has been done on the recommendations of the district  and block presidents. There are 280 blocks and 14 districts in Delhi. Of the 280 blocks, the work has been completed in as many as 230 blocks. That means  that 12 of the 14 districts have already completed the task.

Of the 10 associates, one of these would deal exclusively with digital work of their respective booths. The digital associate would be responsible for collecting phone details of the 300-odd houses which fall under his jurisdiction. He or she would  also be responsible to communicate party’s activities through digital domain. Other associates would be involved in door-to-door campaigns in their  booths.

Mr Singh said that the job of the booth president would be to monitor voting  inside while others would check the credentials of the voters.