Rahul’s YC revival plan in tatters?

Rahul Gandhi’s high-profile campaign against Narendra Modi appears set to come a cropper. The Congress poster boy’s meetings with youth across the state to motivate them to join Youth Congress may have resulted in impressive fresh recruitments, the game plan to kick off with first of the three-tier election process from Tuesday is witnessing total chaos.

Problems regarding voters’ list have been received and constituency of the voters’ names, that have been salvaged, are mixed up. Worse, the contestants received election symbols on Tuesday evening, leaving them little time for campaigning. If all these were not enough, no identity cards have been issued to new recruits to identify themselves at polling stations.

Reliable sources in the party claimed that the very purpose of holding the elections has been defeated. “Rahul has been misled by his team and local workers here. There is no preparation on the eve of the election. It will be complete chaos, confusion and violence. All the Rahul’s efforts to motivate youth to join Youth Congress has come to a naught,” a source in the party said.

Zafar Kantawala, a Congress worker in Jamalpur, said, “When a person enrolled with IYC in the current recruitment drive, he had to fill up a bar-coded form. A bar-coded receipt of this form was to be given to the member, based on which he was to collect an IYC-identification card, on the basis of which he could vote.”

“Things started to go wrong when each new member was not handed over the bar-coded receipt of the form filled up by him. The person who introduced him to Congress was given the receipt, which he has not necessarily passed on to the genuine member.

Now, the voters’ list has not been prepared. The genuine members have no proof of their membership. When a person goes to a polling station to cast his vote, there is no mechanism for the booth managers to confirm his identity,” says Kantawala, who has recruited 1,250 members.

This, he claims, will lead to mass bogus voting. “Those who can flex muscle power will send their ‘supporters’ to vote, as the genuine voter has no means to establish his identity,” the disheartened worker said.

Party sources said the effort was to conduct elections for YC in Gujarat to put an end to the ‘selection’ process whereby a leader is chosen on the basis of his lobbying, not grassroots connect. But, as it has turned out, the party’s first step towards achieving the aim has suffered a setback.

RG, as Rahul is fondly called by his team members in Delhi, had taken the bold step of dissolving the Gujarat unit of Youth Congress to ensure fair elections.

In fact, party workers are even fearing violence at polling booths. “It’s the last working day of March, so we hope people turn up to vote. Next, there are only two polling stations in each seat in schools - it’s a working day for the schools, one doesn’t know how the process will be managed. As of now, there is no provision for police protection at the booths,” said a contestant.

The recruitment dates were postponed by a day because fully filled-up forms had not been received by officials. After that, nomination-filing date was also extended by a day, and the latest was the delay of block presidents’ election by two days, and consequently the Lok Sabha seat election.