Nearly two years after the Congress party lost the 2012 State Assembly polls in Punjab allegedly due to wrong and late allocation of seats, the “once bitten, twice shy” party is taking no chances this time for the 2014 lok Sabha elections.
In what is interpreted as a clear-cut departure from its earlier practice of holding back the list of nominees till the last date of filing of nominations, the Congress party set the ball rolling for finalising the names of its candidates for the ensuing general elections with the party’s election committee holding its first meeting on Monday.
The party, however, is facing a problem of plenty as it has received 10 times the applications by the aspiring candidates of the number of seats in the State. For 13 lok Sabha seats, the party has received a total of 124 applications.
“We have asked for comments on each and every name by the members of the election committee by January 29, after which the names would be screened by the State’s six-member screening committee headed by MP PC Chacko in its meeting on January 30 at New Delhi,” said Punjab Congress party affairs general secretary in-charge Shakeel Ahmad.
The screening committee also includes Deepak Bavriya, Shakeel Ahmad, Harish Chaudhry, Partap Singh Bajwa and Sunil Jakhar as members.
In the election committee meeting, the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) passed a unanimous resolution authorizing the AICC president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi to select candidates for 13 lok Sabha seats of the State.
Out of total 29 members, 25 were present during the meeting including the state party chief Partap Singh Bajwa, Congress legislature Party (ClP) leader Sunil Jakhar, Former Chief Minister and permanent member of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) Capt Amarinder Singh, Union Ministers Santosh Chaudhary and Manish Tewari, former Chief Minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, among others.
Amidst different surveys writing off the party, the Congress has hinted at adopting only one criterion for ticket distribution capacity to win.
Even as the party’s youth leader Rahul Gandhi is
vociferous about anti-corruption campaign, the party has taken recourse to political realism while selecting candidates for the upcoming lok Sabha
elections.
As of now, the party is currently involved in the exercise of preparing a shortlist of candidates for all the lok Sabha constituencies which will be considered by the Central Election Committee chaired by party president Sonia Gandhi.
The party is also planning to announce almost all its candidates by the first week of February, well before the elections, “not only giving the
candidates ample time for preparation, but also to minimize the sabotage by appeasing
dissidents that cost the party 2012 elections”.
“We would focus more on the five seats that we lost in 2009 polls,” said Ahmad. It is expected that the party would once again lay its bet on the names of sitting MPs, while deciding the candidate for Bathinda parliamentary constituency, against sitting MP Harsimrat Badal, is a tough task for the party.
Sources maintained that the central leadership is more likely to prefer young
candidates with a fair image than older ones. In fact, Rahul Gandhi, during his visits to the state post assembly election defeat, has hinted of fielding candidates having “connection with the grassroots”.