The Congress in Delhi on Friday began the process of selecting candidates for the forthcoming Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) polls. The party has asked its district observers to meet all stakeholders in the wards and prepare a report.

Shaktisinh Gohil, Delhi Congress state in-charge, told IANS, “The process begins on Friday and will go on till September 9. Afterwards, the observers will sit with the party’s State Vice-President and later the party State President and prepare the list of probable candidates.”

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He said after receiving the reports from them, he will sit along with the party state president and the district observers concerned to prepare the final list and send it to the Congress high command.

The observers will sit at the District Congress offices and meet all stakeholders at stipulated time and date. The observers are the Congress MLAs from Haryana and have been assigned the responsibility of each district.

The MCD polls are scheduled in 2022 but the Congress has started preparing a year ahead of the polls.

The MCD is divided into three zones and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is ruling the local civic body in all three zones. The MCD polls are indicators of the electorate’s mood in the next major Lok Sabha elections. Right now the BJP has the largest number with 181 seats followed by the AAP at 49 and Congress with 31 seats.

Ahead of the process, former Congress President Rahul Gandhi met the Delhi Congress team and advised them to work as a unit and assured them to participate in the party’s outreach programmes.

The Delhi Congress is coming up with a major outreach programme to reach out to every household in each ward to collect information on the issues there and gather people’s feedback on the Delhi as well as Union government’s role during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Delhi Congress President Anil Kumar Chaudhary said, “The party volunteers are visiting each household and getting feedback of the people and the governments’ role during the pandemic, be it the Union government, Delhi government or the MCD as many hospitals are being run in Delhi by the MCD.”

During the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the ruling government at the Centre and the state failed and due to the mismanagement people suffered in the pandemic, Chaudhary added. He said only Congress volunteers were present on the roads.

Parvez Alam Khan, who contested the last local body elections on a Congress ticket in South MCD but lost to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), said, “I have visited more than 300 households in my ward and am trying to sort out the problems in the area such as waterlogging caused by rain and bad sewage system which the local councillor has ignored.”

Congress has been losing elections after elections in the national capital. At present, the party has zero seats in the Lok Sabha, Delhi Assembly and the Rajya Sabha after ruling Delhi for three successive terms.