Kesri set to sweep polls

Reports from Calcutta said the faction led by firebrand MP, Mamata Banerjee stayed away from elections describing it as “farce and fraud.”

In Chennai, the dissidents, led by former PCC presidents, K Ramamurthy and Kumari Ananthan boycotted the polls alleging that the election appeared farcical as the names of many PCC delegates were omitted from the voters’ list.

Even Pilot complained of problems faced by his supporters in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh while exercising their right to vote. He said that the election should have been “more transparent”.

Briefing newspersons, chief returning officer Oscar Fernandes said the polling, which was from 95 to 100 per cent, was held by and large to the satisfaction of the rank and file.

The counting for the election will be held at the AICC headquarters here on June 12 . The counting will start at 1100 hrs and declaration of result is scheduled the same day.

Meanwhile, set to sweep the presidential election, Kesri tonight took the first step at consolidating his hold in the party by saying he would retain all posts he currently is in.

At the moment, Kesri is Congress chief and the head of the party’s parliamentary party. And as reports poured in of the near-total voting in his favour, Kesri ridiculed the raising of the one-man one-post demand by some Congressmen. “I haven’t heard anything about this. There is no question of it,” he said at his residence as the phone calls came one after the other.

Kesri thus brushed aside both Pawar, his main rival in the party presidential election, and Arjun Singh who recently returned to the Congress after a brief attempt at floating a rival party. Singh had said some days ago that the one-man one-post issue would become relevant once the organisational elections were over.

It was a puzzling remark to make considering that Singh had agreed to be under Kesri in the Congress. But by dismissing the demand as irrelevant, Kesri appears to be positioning himself for the bitter inner-party wrangles expected to follow in the elections to the Congress Working Committee (CWC) and the AICC.

Elsewhere, 10 Kesri loyalists were elected as PCC chiefs without a contest. The biggest surprise was Murli Deora, who was nowhere in the race till the last minute.

Apparently the move was shrewdly manipulated by Kesri right in Pawar’s heartland. And by the time Pawar’s nominee Gurudas Kamat gave up on his nomination, the fight was over. Deora was declared elected unanimously, a statement repeated by returning officers in nine other PCCs. However, Deora’s election was not without dispute as Kamat charged him with major irregularities. “The delegates list was pruned from 91 to 17. What was the point in contesting,” Kamat asked.

It was a refrain the Pawar and Rajesh Pilot camps stuck to today, even though the counting of votes is scheduled to begin only on June 12. Pawar’s supporters Chacko and Anand Sharma today held that the election was totally manipulated in Kesri’s favour and sent complaints to Oscar Fernandes in this respect.

On his part, Fernandes said the voting percentage was between 95 and 100 and in the “best traditions of the Congress”. As a result of this adherence to tradition, the following nine were chosen unopposed with Deora as PCC chiefs.

Virabhadra Singh was elected in Himachal Pradesh, a State where he is already Chief Minister. He is thus in firm control of the party unit there. Jitendra Prasada was re-elected in Uttar Pradesh, K V Thangkabalu achieved the same objective in Tamil Nadu, S C Jamir is the new PCC head in Nagaland, again he is also Chief Minister, Mallikarjun retained his position in Andhra Pradesh as did Somen Mitra in West Bengal, Talo Mugli was chosen in Arunachal Pradesh, P K Bansal in Chandigarh and P Shanmugham in Pondicherry – the last two also retaining their positions.

This completes a third of the PCC chiefs in the Congress with the rest expected to be elected over the next two days. But the interest now moves to the anticipated stepping up of sniping in the Congress with the all-powerful CWC to be reconstituted. Also, about a 1,000 AICC delegates are to be elected from the PCC delegates. The new AICC members will form the plenum of the party in the important plenary session likely to be called within a couple of months.