New Delhi, Aug 26 Ahead of the announcement of the Congress presidential poll schedule, its former senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad has cast aspersions on the election process, calling it a sham. The same word was used by Shahzad Poonawalla in 2017 when he had alleged that the whole process is rigged.
Azad has blasted Rahul Gandhi and his coterie for the dismal performance of the party and termed the entire organisational election process a "farce and a sham" as the party is going to decide the schedule of internal elections.
"At no place anywhere in the country have elections been held at any level of the organisation. Handpicked lieutenants of the AICC have been coerced to sign on lists prepared by the coterie that runs the AICC sitting in 24 Akbar Road," he said.
Azad said in his letter to Sonia Gandhi that at no place in a booth, block, district or state was an electoral roll published, nominations invited, scrutinized, polling booths set up and elections held and the AICC leadership was squarely responsible for perpetrating a giant fraud on the party to perpetuate it's hold on the ruins of what was once a national movement that fought for and attained the Independence of India.
"Does the Indian National Congress deserve this in the 75th year of India's Independence is a question that the AICC leadership must ask itself," he said
Similarly, present BJP spokesperson and former Maharashtra Congress secretary Shahzad Poonawalla in 2017 had slammed the process to elect the party president, and had alleged that it was "rigged".
Poonawalla had alleged that it is a "selection process" and a "sham" of an election process. At that time he intended to contest the election but the Congress had said he was not a PCC delegate, mandatory to contest the election.
"I cannot contest a rigged election. If the system is genuine, then I will contest. It is a rigged election...it is a selection. Delegates who are going to vote for this election have not been elected as per the constitutional requirements. They have been handpicked," he had told at that time.
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