Tewari, Tharoor, Karti echo poll roll fears

NEW DELHI: The clamour for transparency in the electoral college of the Congress presidential elections grew louder on Wednesday with the party’s members of Parliament Manish Tewari, Shashi Tharoor and Karti Chidambaram echoing the concerns flagged by senior leader Anand Sharma at the recent Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting.

They demanded that the names of the 9,000 AICC delegates eligible for voting be published on the AICC website, countering the Congress Central Election Authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry’s plan to send the poll rolls to the respective Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) offices.

“With great respect @MD_Mistry ji How can there be a fair & free election without a publicly available electoral roll ? Essence of a fair & free process is names & addresses of electors must be published on @IN CIndia website in a transparent manner,” Tewari said on Twitter.

“Why should someone have to go to every PCC office in the country to find out who the electors are?” he reasoned. Tharoor, who is looking to enter the fray, said: “Certainly, I think it’s important that everybody should have transparency on the electoral rolls.

If that’s what Manish has asked for, then I’m sure that it’s a principle that everybody would agree with. Everybody should know who can nominate and who can vote. There is nothing wrong with that.” Karti said,

“The process of forming the electoral college must also be clear, well defined, and transparent.” Countering them, Rahul Gandhi loyalist Manickam Tagore wondered “Why are my colleagues trying to create confusion in the electoral process?”