NEW DELHI, June 8: Beginning 9 am tomorrow, about 8,000 PCC delegates will vote to choose a man for arguably the toughest political job in the country at the moment -- presidency of the problem-ridden Congress.

It is a novel exercise for almost all the voters, with the last such party poll having taken place in 1950 when the current PCC delegates would have been in school (in 1977, Brahmananda Reddy defeated Siddarth Shankar Ray in a bye-election but this only involved the AICC delegates).

This is the third direct election for the top Congress party post in its 112 year-old history. In 1938, revolutionary leader Subhash Chandra Bose won the election after a keenly contested election against the wishes of top party leaders. He had to resign only after three months in the interests of the party. Similarly in 1950, Parshottam Das Tandon defeated Acharya J B Kirplani to become the AICC chief. He also resigned after six months in the interests of the party unity. Later the then prime minister Jawahar Lal Nehru took over as the Congress president.

This time the three-cornered contest features interim party chief Sitaram Kesri, Congress Lok Sabha leader Sharad Pawar and young turk Rajesh Pilot. All three are members of the current Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party's top decision making body which took a host of controversial steps in the last year or so.

Having thus been party to the immediate past, which included three weeks of turmoil after Kesri pulled the Deve Gowda government down, the three candidates have now pledged to undo some of their mistakes, look ahead and work for the revival of the Congress.

How much their appeals have convinced party voters will be known on June 12, when the ballot boxes will be opened for counting at the AICC headquarters here. The methodology is relatively complex with three men in the fray. The PCC delegates will first sign the counterfoil and pick up a ballot paper with the corresponding serial number. They will then mark 1, 2 or 3 against the names on the ballot paper, in order of preference.

Should anybody choose only one person, the vote will be invalid. The next step, after the boxes are sealed, will be the counting. The winner is through if he gets 50 per cent first preference votes plus one.

Should this not happen, the candidate who is third in the first preference votes is eliminated and his second preference votes get transferred to the other two named as their first preference votes.

The new tally of votes is then counted and a winner declared on the first past the post principle. However, the winner will almost at once step into a chaotic situation. All eyes will be on him and several issues have to be tackled with an urgency the party has not shown in recent years. Kesri will be the oldest Congress president to be elected if he wins and age has already been made an issue this time by Pawar and Pilot.

The first priority, Kesri, Pawar and Pilot have reiterated often enough, is to revive the party. The Congress currently is alienated from the Brahmin and Upper Caste voters, Other Backward Classes, minorities, Dalits and Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes. The recent loss in all three Lok Sabha bye-elections confirms this. Indeed, at times it is a surprise if the party wins anywhere in the country.

To get all the above sections of the society back to the Congress fold is difficult enough for party leaders to avoid the exercise. Now there can be no more procrastination, especially on the corruption issue. Faltering at this stage could well spell curtains for the party, as the three candidates have argued in the days gone by. Today, yet again, Kesri, Pawar and Pilot stressed they would win.

However, the focus now shifts to what after the election. The winner will have to face the revival of the one-man one-post principle. This would imply that Kesri might have to shed the CPP leadership if elected party president or Pawar might have to step down as Congress Lok Sabha leader if he emerges victorious.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.