NEW DELHI, June 7: Under instructions from Sitaram Kesri, Congress Working Committee (CWC) members close to him today fanned out in various parts of the country overseeing last-minute arrangements to ensure their candidate's victory in Monday's Congress presidential election.

Jitendra Prasada held forth in Lucknow with a general body meeting of the state unit scheduled tomorrow where a formal resolution will be moved in Kesri's support. Pranab Mukherjee is camping in Calcutta from where he is in touch with the north-eastern states. Mukherjee will remain there, cast his vote and return to Delhi on Monday night.

A K Antony is in Kerala where the votes are few as the state unit polls are yet to be held. Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy is in Hyderabad where over 600 Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) delegates will cast their votes by secret ballot. Orissa Chief Minister and special invitee to the CWC J B Patnaik is in charge of things in Bhubaneswar. R K Dhawan and Meira Kumar are in Delhi where, again, the unit elections have not been held as of date. With Balram Jakhar, Naval Kishore Sharma, Manmohan Singh, Sudhakarrao Naik and Madhavsinh Solanki also in favour of Kesri, the leadership of the present Congress set-up is loaded in his favour. Monday will show whether this clout has been successfully translated to the PCC delegates.

Not that Kesri appeared to be worried. Despite an aggressive, high profile campaign, Sharad Pawar does not have much support in the open. All his followers, he says, are covertly working for him. As the rival to Kesri, he can hardly afford to come out before the actual date of polling and show his cards, his camp here avers.

Which may be true but the absence of a visible swing in Pawar's favour may adversely affect the chances of him unseating Kesri, at least in this election. Till today evening, Pawar was waging a solitary battle in the company of a few well-known supporters like G Venkatswamy, V C Shukla and A R Antulay. Antulay is settled in Mumbai where he will cast his vote like Pawar.

In the current CWC, which will make way for a fresh body in a couple of months, only P V Narasimha Rao, Ghulam Nabi Azad and K Karunakaran are solidly behind Pawar. That does not add up to much on paper and Pawar's chances must now solely rest on what happens in the secret voting when he is banking on people changing their minds at the last moment.

There were some doubts expressed in a section of the Congress over the secrecy of the voting pattern. It was said that with the serial numbers matching on the ballot papers and their counterfoils, it will be easy to check who voted for whom. This logic is based on the voters having to sign on the counterfoil before being issued the ballot paper. The signatures can be easily matched later, the doubters said.

However this is the same pattern followed in any voting and if the serial numbers do not match, the chances of bogus ballot papers being printed is high. In any case, the ballot papers will be mixed thoroughly before the counting begins on June 12 at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters here. The boxes will arrive here from the state capitals and will be opened in a common heap. Once this is done, the papers will be mixed so that no single box is opened at a time. Identification of area-wise voting patterns is thus almost impossible.

But this minor controversy apart, all three candidates in the fray have by now claimed a comfortable victory. But since only one of them can win, it remains to be seen who was right in his claim.

Rajesh Pilot, whose candidature this time is being seen as positioning for future elections, was still carving out a lone and valiant path. His band of young Turks is well aware that he is a losing proposition in this election but claim that Pilot's time will come. With him are Salman Khursheed, K P Singh Deo and Mangat Ram not enough for him to become party president on Monday.

Chief Returning Officer Oscar Fernandes held a final meeting with Pradesh Returning Officers here today briefing them on how to handle the sensitive exercise. Thus far, Fernandes has had none of the problems facing his Janata Dal counterpart P K Samantray. Fernandes is hoping his luck will run till Monday evening when his job will be done.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.