Central Election Authority of Congress discuss logistics for internal polls

The Central Election Authority (CEA) of the Congress on Wednesday set in motion the discussions for conducting internal polls for the next party president to succeed Sonia Gandhi.

The CEA, which was constituted last month, is chaired by veteran leader Madhusudan Mistry with Rajesh Mishra, Krishna Byre Gowda, S Jothimani and Arvinder Singh Lovely as members.

“We discussed the logistics related to the internal elections,” a leader who attended the meeting at the Congress headquarters here told DH. He said it was too early to talk about the schedule for the organisational elections and the panel would get to that stage in subsequent meetings.

Wednesday’s discussions centred around the appointment of assistant presiding officers for the election and conducting the process in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi had constituted the CEA while carrying out an organisational reshuffle on September 11. At the meeting of the Congress Working Committee on August 24, Sonia had told the party to look for a new party chief as she had agreed to carry out the responsibility only for an interim period.

Sonia had returned as Congress president in August last year after Rahul Gandhi stepped down from the post owning responsibility for the defeat in the Lok Sabha elections.