Before organisational elections, over 2.8 crore digitally enroll as Congress members

Ahead of the internal elections next month, Congress President Sonia Gandhi was amongst the last batch of leaders who took part in the digital membership drive that ends on Friday. After a two-week extension, a total of 2.8 crore people have digitally enrolled in the party and over 3 crore have joined through paper-based membership.

Speaking to HT, Congress’ social media team member, Mayur Shekhar Jha said that this is the first time a digital database of party members has been created which will help understand the party’s strengths and weaknesses. “This will help us contest elections,” he added.

Providing state-specific data, he said Karnataka has the highest number of digitally enrolled members, currently standing at over 70 lakh, followed by Telangana which has around 50 lakh members. He added that both states also have 100 per cent booth coverage, meaning that every booth has one Congress member.

Providing further data, Jha said that 42 per cent of the enrolled members are women and 59 per cent of the digital enrollers are below the age of 35.

Taking a swipe at the ruling party, Jha said that unlike the Bharatiya Janata Party where people give a “missed call” and join, “our drive is a very thoroughly verified drive”. He added that each member is verified in four steps- verified through enroller, then voter id, then mobile number (through OTP) and then photograph. Once all four steps are cleared, a digital identity card with a unique code is given to the members.

Initially, Congress was also following the traditional paper-based membership drive, however, in a general secretary-level meeting; Priyanka Gandhi said this method would be “cumbersome”, after which the digital method was adopted.

This membership drive comes after the party’s poor performance in the Assembly Elections and is the key step before the much-awaited organisational elections.