The Congress party’s aversion for organisational elections is reflected in its dilly-dallying on the issue. Even now it is at best a conjecture whether the party will stick to the election schedule announced last Friday. Equally doubtful is whether the Election Commission will let the Congress off the hook for not adhering to the ultimatum it had given to all political parties to complete such polls before May 31. Though the party has not formally challenged the commission’s right to insist upon the polls, oblique suggestions made by its leaders indicate that it is not convinced about such a right. It is a different matter that the commission had never in the past made the holding of organisational elections a condition for according symbols and recognition to political parties. True, a party is bound by its own constitution just as a cooperative society is expected to function in accordance with the by-laws framed by it. Like the Registrar of Cooperative Societies who is duty-bound to ensure that the society is run in a proper manner, the EC is expected to make sure that a political party upholds democratic principles in its functioning. It is, in fact, a pity that a century-old party, which supposedly lays great store by its democratic credentials, has to be coerced into holding organisational elections.

If, for a long time, nomination, rather than election, became a characteristic feature of the party’s internal functioning, it was essentially because of the personality cult that was allowed to grow in the party. Former Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao could have legitimately taken credit for restoring internal democracy in the party, when he initiated the election process soon after coming to power. But in wanton disregard of all democratic norms, he forced all those who contested and won the elections to the Congress Working Committee to resign so that he could nominate them to the same committee. His successor as Congress president Sitaram Kesri seems to have taken a cue from him and has been using his right to nominate partymen to the highest decision-making body of the party to pack it with his own men. It has not occurred to him that in doing so he has deprived the CWC of much of its authority. If, in the process, the CWC has become a rubber-stamp, it may be the president’s gain, but it is certainly the party’s loss.

It is also not difficult to see Kesri’s attempt to control the party in the new poll schedule. Ordinarily, the elections should have, in a pyramidal fashion, culminated in the election of the party president. But by ensuring that the president is elected before the state PCC chiefs are, he would be able to see to it that his own men control the state units. All these Machiavellian strategies may help Kesri to stay in power for a full term but how will it help the party regain its lost moorings? There can be no denying that the organisational elections provide the Congress an opportunity to rejuvenate itself. But going by the way elections are being organised, it appears that they will only exacerbate the tensions within the organisation and thereby weaken it. The demand from a section of the Congressmen in Bihar that the Election Commission should supervise the polls lest Kesri’s supporters should manipulate the outcome is a straw in the wind.