Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s call to end the “quota system” in ticket distribution would come up in the crucial meeting of the Central Election Committee of the party
NEW DELHI: Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s call to end the “quota system” in ticket distribution would come up in the crucial meeting of the Central Election Committee (CEC) of the party which will finalise the candidates for the coming assembly polls in six states.
“The first meeting of the CEC to finalise party tickets likely to be held on October 19,” Congress media department chief M Veerappa Moily said.
Gandhi had called for an end to the quota system at a meeting last month in the capital saying that “hard decisions” would have to be taken and there should be no “interference” in the process of ticket distribution.
According to sources, the quota system refers to the process in which senior party leaders choose the candidates, some of them from their family and acquaintances and neglect merit, past political record, age and winability of the candidate.
“The interest of the party is sacrificed at the altar of self-gratifying interests of some leaders,” said an AICC functionary, explaining the new political paradigm of the party.
“For our self-interest and ambitions we lose in elections and make the party weak,” Gandhi had said in the CWC meeting while giving a call for the end of the quota system.
In the poll-bound states of Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, where the stakes are very high for the Congress, this will be for the first time that the new experiment of the party will be seen on the ground.
In the meetings of the pradesh election committees and the screening committees for all these states, a panel of names has been drawn for each constituency.
“The party president will scrutinise the names and is expected to approve it as per the new guidelines,” a senior Congress leader said. He said it was at this stage that the final decision will be taken and inclusion of names of relatives, friends and acquaintances would be examined.
Party sources said the forthcoming assembly elections in six states — Delhi, MP, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, J&K and Mizoram — would be path-breaking in the sense that for the first time candidates will be declared much before the last date of filing of the nomination as per the recommendations of the Antony Committee on internal reforms within the party.
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