Ever since the new committee was set up on August 5, with Dikshit as its head, the party has appointed 54 election observers to work out the distribution of tickets for the 70 constituencies.

This would mean that each observer looks after just about one-and-a-half tickets. Going by this arithmetic, 13 such `posts' are still vacant, which will be accommodated as and when the mutineers make their presence felt.

The tradition of poll observers began when Dikshit realised that even after setting up a jumbo 150-member committee not everyone felt accommodated. ``Not everybody can be a vice-president of the DPCC. There are already 12 of them,'' pointed out one vice-president.

So with the promise that everyone would be given a piece of the action, the first panel of poll observers was set up in August with 34 members.

These included influential Congress leaders like Sajjan Kumar, Jagdish Tytler and Jai Prakash Aggarwal.

The 34 also included those who had been `ordained' by the high command like Ramvir Bidhuri, K.S. Gujral and Mangat Ram Singhal.

As there was a lobbying going on to get on this list, and as a sop to senior leaders, many of their prodigies were accommodated. These include leaders like Hassan Ahmed, Jai Kishen, Rama Kant Goswami, Ram Babu Sharma and Ajit Singh.But with the election process due to start, the observers had little work.

Thus on October 14, came the second list of 12 poll observers. Out of these six were MPs and six were former Parliamentarians.

Among the former MPs, Sanotsh Chaudhary is the observer for Malviya Nagar, Iqbal Singh for Rohini, Jitender Singh for Krishna Nagar, Balkhishan Wasnik for Badarpur, Santram Singla for Sadar and Pawan Kumar Bansal.

And among the MPs, Raju Bai Parmar is the observer for Tilak Nagar, Akilesh Kumar Das for Mehrauli, Anant Prasad Sethi for Najafgarh, Ravi Mallu for Adarsh Nagar, Frida Topno for city district, and for Karol Bagh, Chandrika Jain.

Finally, on October 26, the All India Congress Committee announced the final list of poll observers who also form part of the scrutiny committee. These include Vijay Bhaskar Reddy, Ahmed Patel, Jag Parvesh Chandra, Sheila Dikshit and Oscar Fernades.