Congress' primaries: Will Rahul's experiment win elections?

New Delhi: Not everyone in the Congress party is thrilled with vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s bold move to let party workers choose 15 Lok Sabha candidates through primaries. The first to openly criticise the experiment, Union Minister Beni Prasad Verma on Monday compared primaries to an ‘auction’ and said it risked being sabotaged by rival parties.

It is not surprising that primaries—an untested system in India—are making some senior leaders anxious.

Given that candidate selection is dictated by the cold logic of ‘winnability’ what happens when a candidate selected through primaries is the wrong fit for a constituency?

Says Hari Shankar Gupta, Congress worker in-charge of primaries in Delhi, when asked about the ‘winnability’ quotient of candidates elected through primaries, “That I cannot say. Before elections are held, no one can say this. We cannot comment on this. The primaries are an exercise to bring more transparency into the organisation.”

According to political analysts candidate selection through primaries will have little or no impact on the candidate’s electoral prospects. On the contrary, it could risk throwing up candidates that maybe popular within the party but have no connect with the voters.

Says Sanjay Kumar, psephologist and Director, Centre for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), “In the primaries the local level party workers will be allowed to vote and select their candidate. This would have very little impact on the winnability of the candidate because finally the voters are in much larger numbers and it is not just these party workers who will vote for the candidate in the real election. While primaries would help minimise divisions within the party, it is not a measure of the real popularity of a candidate at ground level among voters who will finally vote for that candidate.”

Indeed, those registered to vote in the primaries represent only a tiny fraction of the voters in a Lok Sabha constituency which normally runs into lakhs. For instance, the New Delhi Lok Sabha constituency, for which the Congress party announced holding a primary last week, has 13 lakh voters. But the number of registered voters who will participate in the primary to select the party candidate will be around 500-600.

The party workers, however, argue that the primaries by energising the cadre and thereby the campaign, will ultimately benefit the electoral prospects of the candidate.

“If you voted for the winning candidate, you’ll do everything to make sure he wins the election,” reasons Onika Mehrotra, president of the Delhi Mahila Congress. Mehrotra is a registered voter for the New Delhi primary which is scheduled tentatively for 6 March.

Then again, what about electoral considerations such as caste and religious profile of a constituency - factors that ultimately determine the electoral prospects of a candidate? Will selection of candidates through primaries override such electoral compulsions?

“The primary will not minimise those considerations because party workers would like to select such a candidate who would be seen as someone who can reflect the nature of constituency,” says Kumar.

As per the guidelines laid down by the party, a candidate is eligible to contest in the primaries if he is qualified to stand for a Lok Sabha election, is without a criminal record and is either an experienced Congress party member or a person of ‘standing in public service or social cause'.

And those eligible to vote are present and former office bearers of the party’s national and state committees and its frontal organisations (such as Indian Youth Congress, National Students Union of India, Seva Dal, Mahila Congress) who are registered as voters in the concerned Lok Sabha.

Also eligible to vote are past and present party MLAs, MPs, MLCs, corporators and members of the zilla parishad, block samitis and so on, provided they belong the Lok Sabha constituency in question.

“Every candidate has to come in person to file his or her nomination. They cannot send representatives. After scrutiny of the nominations, the list of candidates is put out for objections, if any, by registered voters,” said Netta D’souza, one of the returning officers in-charge of the Delhi primaries.

On election day, said the returning officer, every candidate is given 5-10 minutes to speak and voters allowed to interact with candidates at the convention centre. “Immediately after voting, the counting will be done. The result will not be announced by us but will be forwarded to the Central Election Committee and they’ll make the decision,” said D’souza.

The candidate who wins more than 50 percent votes will be declared the winner. If no one gets more 50 percent, preferential counting will be counted.

While party workers are reluctant to comment on the winnability of candidates selected through primaries in the election, they insist the goal is to create a transparent system and to give them a say in the process of ticket selection.

As D’souza puts it, “The purpose of the process is cadre empowerment.”

Says Harish Arora, a party worker in-charge of the New Delhi district office, “This has woken up the cadre. I feel this is having a good impact on party workers.”

The possible intent of such a project, says Kumar, is to send out a message that not all candidates are selected based on their connections or simply because they are sitting MPs.

“On a small scale, the party is trying to give the message that party workers are important and that they have a say on who should be given the ticket. It has more to do with developing confidence among party workers rather than trying to connect with voters,” says Kumar.

The New Delhi Lok Sabha, one of two constituencies in the Nation Capital Region of Delhi that has been chosen for primaries, will be the first where Congress has a sitting Member of Parliament.

Of the 15 Lok Sabhas chosen, in two—Guwahati and Kolkata—primaries have already been conducted.

The New Delhi seat belongs Ajay Maken, who defeated BJP’s Vijay Goel in 2009 by 1.8 lakh votes.

According to party sources, Maken is likely to win uncontested. It is unlikely, say party insiders, anyone other than Maken will file their nomination making him the sole candidate.

This, of course raises another question entirely: Why bother with the primaries at all?