Youth Congress to continue with organizational elections

NEW DELHI: Youth Congress will continue with organizational elections, rebuffing the critics who said it was time to put a stop to Rahul Gandhi's experiments.

The youth outfit at its national executive meeting this week approved an organizational plan with internal elections at its core but with minor changes to empower state presidents to nominate and promote office-bearers.

"Elections will continue in Youth Congress but nomination of office-bearers has also been included at the assembly segment level while promotions have been allowed at the Lok Sabha level. Elections remain the core idea," Youth Congress president Rajiv Satav told TOI.

The revamp of the "democratization" process, which adds "nomination" and "promotion" of office-bearers to their election, was approved by Rahul at the meeting on Thursday.

It puts an end to speculation about the fate of "democratization" process that Rahul set in motion after taking charge of Congress's youth outfits as AICC general secretary.

The party "old guard" and other critics have claimed serious flaws in Rahul's experiment, arguing that internal elections had not eliminated the ills of the "nomination" culture but only blunted the agitational edge of the outfits that used to be the sword arms of the mother party. The spread of money power to buy elections has been a key argument.

Traditionally, the Congress leadership used to nominate office-bearers of Youth Congress and NSUI till internal elections threw open the posts to aspirants.

While internal polls will continue, as reported by TOI, the improvisation to include nominations and promotions has been done to empower state presidents. It was complained that since all office-bearers were elected, they did not give much importance to the presidents and consequently, the latter were not able to exercise authority over their subordinates.

Now, the power to nominate and promote office-bearers will strengthen the authority of presidents. The improvisation thus has nothing to do with criticism from the "old guard" but is only a refinement of the democratization process.

Rahul, however, seems to realize the criticism that Youth Congress had lost its fire. At the meeting, sources said, the Congress heir apparent urged the IYC to "come on the streets representing the common man" to fight the "regressive" government.