Taking a leaf out of AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi’s prescription on transparency in the party, the Bihar unit of the Congress has laid out a well-spread system for screening the candidates for the upcoming state Assembly elections. The party has decided to go it alone this time and will field its candidates from all 243 seats.
Speaking to this newspaper, BPCC president Anil Sharma said, “Encouraged by our leader Rahulji, we have put in place a transparent system to identify party candidates for the Assembly elections from among the workers at the Assembly segment level.”
No office-bearers, “either at the district or at the state level”, can have the discretion to name the candidates on their own, he added.
The BPCC has formed screening committees at Assembly segment and district levels.
After shortlisting the candidates at these two levels, prospective names will come to the state screening committee, which will send a list of three names for the AICC’s central election committee to choose candidates for each of the segments.
“At the Assembly segment level, the members of the screening committee will include presidents of DPCC and block chiefs and other office-bearers. Among themselves, they will prepare a panel of about 10 probable and then, after receiving the list, the district committees, which will have representatives from both the block- and state-level leaders, will shortlist seven best among them and send the list to the state committee,” Mr Sharma said.
However, a guideline has been circulated for the grassroots screening committees to adhere to in their effort to identify prospective candidates for each of the Assembly segment, Mr Sharma added. “The district committees has been instructed that they should look for at least two youth, one each from SC and ST community, one OBC, one woman and one general category candidate,” the BPCC president informed. “You should not be surprised to see more than 50 per cent youth getting Congress tickets in the upcoming Assembly elections,” he said, adding that the party is focusing more on youth.