The Congress party, after appointing a majority of its district presidents across the country under the Sangathan Srijan Abhiyan, has moved ahead with a colour-coded mechanism to assess their performance.
The data will be constantly accessible to central war-room chairman Sashikant Senthil through an online application where the work of each district president will be categorised in colours — green for good performance, amber for average and red for poor performance.
The party has made a structured attempt to create a framework in which accountability plays a central role through periodic performance reviews. Through the same mechanism, it also aims to assess the need for rejuvenation of local leadership, if required.
For this, the party has created an online facility where every district president has to upload details of his monthly work. The information can be directly monitored by the state connect centres as well as accessed by the central connect centre.
A senior office-bearer in the central war room said, “There will be a review after three months, and if a district president fails to perform — for example, if he falls in the red category — he will be told to pull his socks up and will be given another three months to improve. If he still fails to perform, the party will scrutinise his work more closely and may even consider a replacement.”
However, there is still no clear mechanism within the party to hold AICC general secretaries accountable for their performance. A senior Congress leader aware of the matter said that once the functioning, process and hierarchy of district presidents become systematised, the party may move towards creating a similar accountability framework for AICC general secretaries as well.
A district president said, "We have to do public meetings, get people enrolled, strengthen our cadre or do similar activities by which we can build mass connections. The goal is to build a cadre on the ground and to increase the support of people for the party."
