Five Congress leaders, including Shashi Tharoor (Thiruvananthapuram MP) and Manish Tewari (Anandpur Sahib MP), who were airing concerns over the forthcoming party elections, have formally written to the grand old party’s Central Election Authority (CEA) Chairman Madhusudan Mistry seeking transparency in the polls and making public the electoral rolls, informed sources said.

Tharoor, Tewari and three others, including two MPs from Assam, have signed the letter, the sources said.

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In the letter, they also demanded that the list of PCC delegates be made public to ensure transparency in the elections.

Tewari and Karti Chidambaram had urged the Central Election Authority to make the electoral rolls public and available on the Congress website.

However, the CEA said these rolls will be made available to candidates contesting elections, saying that it was confidential data and can’t be made public.

Another leader, Anand Sharma, too had raised the issue in the CWC meeting.

Tewari and Karti Chidambaram had raised concerns over the manner in which the presidential poll in the party was being held.

Underlining the need of a well-defined electoral college, Karti Chidambaram said any ad hoc electoral college is meaningless.

Tewari too had raised doubts over the electoral rolls ahead of the party’s presidential poll, saying these should be made public to ensure a free and fair election process.

He had questioned Mistry’s remark that party members wishing to contest can get access to the list in PCC offices as the list of electors has not been made public.

The Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s highest decision-making authority, on August 28 held a virtual meeting and decided that the election for the Congress president post will be held on October 17 and the counting of the votes and the results will be declared on October 19.