Cong sold tickets in K'taka: Alva

NEW DELHI: In a major embarrassment for the Congress on election eve, party general secretary Margaret Alva on Thursday said party nominations in the recent Karnataka polls went for a price.

Ms Alva, who suggested that corruption was gnawing at the vitals of her party organisation, said merit and winnability were not the criteria for nomination. In the process, Ms Alva also advertised that her party is riven with internal animosities.

After the party denied nomination for her son Nivedith to contest in the state election, Ms Alva has been complaining about the party adopting ���different yardsticks��� for selecting candidates. She said the party, which denied tickets for her son and grandson of former Union minister C K Jaffer Sharief, was generous in awarding tickets to relatives of senior Congress leaders in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Jammu & Kashmir.

���Was my son and Jaffer Sharief���s grandson anti-national, terrorists or smugglers?��� asked Alva. She also said that she would be writing to party chief Sonia Gandhi about instances of relatives of leaders getting nominations in poll-bound states. Ms Alva oversees the work of the organisation in Maharashtra, Punjab and Haryana.

The attack must be discomforting for the Congress as the candidate selection process was carried out by a panel comprising party general secretary Digvijay Singh and Union ministers Vayalar Ravi and Mr Prithviraj Chavan. Mr Chavan dismissed Ms Alva���s charges as ���unsubstantiated and born out of frustration.���

Talking to reporters, Mr Chavan said: ���As long as Alva is general secretary, I will not comment on her unfortunate statement. Since she is general secretary of the party, any decision on it will be taken by the Congress high command and Central Disciplinary Action Committee.��� This is the first time that a senior Congress functionary has levelled the charge of corruption.