Notwithstanding a terse decline from the party on making public the electoral rolls for the Congress president elections, party leaders continued to mount pressure on the organisation seeking the publication of internal electoral rolls.
Assam Lok Sabha MP Pradyut Bordoloi on Friday became the latest to write to the party's central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry asking him to make the electoral rolls public. This even as senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor reiterated his demand.
Their letters come as voices demanding the publication of the electors' list grow louder by the day and a debate within the party intensifies.
A day earlier party MPs Manish Tewari and Karti Chidambaram along with Tharoor had demanded that electoral rolls be made public to ensure transparency.
Mistry has maintained that the election is being held transparently and the entire poll process is free and fair. He had said earlier this week that according to the party's constitution, the electoral roll cannot be made public, but it can be provided to anyone contesting the election. Congress MP Manickam Tagore too countered the leaders demanding the publication of electoral rolls, saying they must not create confusion and should be proud of the "open system".
The nomination process includes 10 proposers who are Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) delegates. According to sources, the senior leader has said it is important to know about these delegates as papers can get rejected if their names do not feature in the final list.
Tewari, who is among the G-23 leaders along with Tharoor seeking large scale party reforms, has raised objections to the party not making public the names of electors for the party president polls and said it must be published on the All India Congress Committee website for a "free and fair" process.
Tharoor, who has expressed his intent to contest the party's presidential election, had agreed with Tewari and said everybody should know who can nominate and who can vote.