‘Old’ Congress leaders expect tickets for Gujarat polls

NEW DELHI: Ahead of the Gujarat Assembly Election, the Congress MLAs are hopeful that the party will distribute tickets to their previous candidates who were represented in the 2017 Assembly election. The party’s senior officials, however, are still considering this strategy and are of the opinion that the tickets would go to deserving candidates, both old and new.
Speaking about the distribution of the tickets among party members, a senior party member told The Sunday Guardian, “Giving a chance to the new faces won’t be making any sense as they have not done much work. All the work is almost done by the old candidates. The public stays connected with the known faces, which are mostly the old leaders, who have represented themselves in the previous assembly elections. Due to the lack of experience in politics, young people will not be able to make any significant impact. The party needs to understand and select accordingly.”
However, another party functionary told this paper, “We do not know what decision the senior party leaders will make, but giving tickets to the old representatives will be better.”
Congress was defeated in the 2017 Assembly election. Although Congress has claimed that they have been getting tremendous positive responses, the party members still believe that the groundwork needs to be strengthened and the leaders need to be connected to the people. However, senior leaders believe that the party needs visionary young people with experience. Speaking to this paper, Manish Doshi, the chief spokesperson of AICC, said, “It is important that both the old and the new candidates be engaged in the groundwork. The party may give tickets to anyone and will not repeat the mistakes it made in the last election. Young people have vision, and old people have experience. If they go parallel, we may improve our vote share.”
In the meantime, Congress believes that AAP may impact the vote share of Congress and the BJP in the 182-member seat; however, AAP may not win the state. The Congress workers are working harder to reclaim their lost seats. Despite winning the 2017 Assembly election, BJP’s votes fell from 119 to 99 seats, while the support for the Congress climbed from 57 to 77 seats, whereas the AAP couldn’t garner any seats in the last Assembly bypoll.