The aspiring candidates for the Congress seats in the forthcoming Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls have been asked to give details like how many demonstrations and protests they had organised in the last five years, whether they had a criminal background, their financial status and how many of the candidates backed by them had won the local elections.
According to state Congress leaders, the questionnaire is part of the vetting process introduced by Congress deputy chief Rahul Gandhi, who had earlier applied the same formula in Karnataka to help the party return to power there after a sizable gap.
“This time, rather than just giving the tickets to the candidates on the basis of the recommendations of senior leaders, a more systematic process has been put in place. “A series of questions have been included in the survey, including the margin of victory or defeat in the last polls contested by them.”
“They have also been asked about the performance of the party in the local elections in their constituency. The candidates are required to fill the questionnaires which is then scrutinised by senior leaders.
“On the basis of their responses, the names are being shortlisted by the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC), which is then being forwarded to the Screening Committee at the Centre,” a senior Congress leader said.
And MPCC vice-president Manak Aggarwal said the exercise was being undertaken to pick the winning candidates.
“The tickets will be given only to the candidates who will win. The exercise is being carried out to prune the long list of names that we have got. We expect the names to be declared in the last week of October. The MPCC has already sent most of the shortlisted names to the Screening Committee,” he told Express.