Bihar polls: Congress appoints Ashok Gehlot, Bhupesh Baghel as senior election observers

New Delhi: Getting battle-ready for the Bihar polls, Congress has tasked its senior leaders former Chief Ministers Ashok Gehlot and Bhupesh Baghel as well as former party Lok Sabha leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury as senior observers besides appointing 41 senior functionaries with experience in election management as district observers.

The appointments were cleared by party chief Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress General Secretary (Organisation) KC Venugopal said.

Gehlot and Baghel have managed a slew of Assembly elections in the past couple of years while Chowdhury too is an expert in election management.

The choice of district election observers also showed that the party has chosen senior leaders with election management experience like General Secretary and UP in-charge Avinash Pande, CWC member Kamleshwar Patel, in-charges Harish Choudhary, Qazi Nizamuddin and Ajay Kumar Lallu.

The district observers also include state presidents Bhakta Charan Das, Ajai Rai and Shubankar Sarkar, Adivasi Congress chief Dr Vikrant Bhuria, MPs Isha Khan Chaudhary and Tanuj Punia, former Delhi president Anil Chaudhary and former Youth Congress president BV Srinivas.

The appointment of observers comes as the Election Commission is expected to announce the schedule for the Bihar Assembly elections this week. On Saturday, parties have told the EC in a meeting in Patna that the polls will be held soon after the festival and in phases not more than two.

With better organisational work, Congress is hoping to better its performance in Bihar where it had won just 19 out of 70 seats it contested with a vote share of 9.48%. In 2015, Congress had won 27 out of 41 seats with a vote share of 6.6% but at that time, JD(U) was also part of the alliance.

The party has said that it would insist on “quality” seats rather than the number this time though state leaders have raised the bar citing the reception of ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ led by Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi.