Raebareli: Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, daughter of Congress President Sonia Gandhi and sister of party Vice President RahulGandhi, has found an innovative way to pick leaders. She had some specific questions to the 95 hopefuls whom she had interacted at Raebareli over the past two days, in a bid to finalise names of Congress presidents for each of the town’s 31 wards.

The exercise was part of Priyanka Gandhi’s efforts to strengthen the party organisation in her mother’s Lok Sabha constituency. “You have family and social responsibilities; how can you find time for party work? If you are made a party ward president, how will you function as a leader?” Priyanka Gandhi asked the Mukesh Kumar Singh, a candidate for Ward 21, whose father and grandfather too are Congress activists.  “I told her that my legal practice was a kind of social work and that I met many people every day. I said I would extend my social service to a greater number of people. If I am chosen a party leader, I shall follow the party’s policies and implement its agenda at the ward level.”

The three other questions that Priyanka asked candidates, besides making enquiries about their family background, were: Why do you want to be a Congress leader and since when have you developed a preference for the party and have been following its policies? How should one get a Congress voter out of his home and bring him to the poll booth? How would you counter the campaign against the Congress?

A candidate for Ward 15, trader Lalit Singh, said: “Priyankaji doesn’t give you much time to think. She insisted that I answer quickly; she said she didn’t want laboured thoughts, nor answers aimed at pleasing her.”

The Congress workers are quite impressed with this novel step of Priyanka Gandhi. Earlier, Congress district presidents used to handpick party workers depending on their verbal expressions of loyalty. There wasn’t much grassroots representation. But Priyanka set out to correct this after taking over the task of strengthening the party organisation in the constituency in October last year.

Priyanka Gandhi has been telling party workers in the district that political challenges need to be tackled at the micro-level. Last November, she launched a “Congress At Your Doorstep” campaign to select village representatives for the party’s district bodies. In the past six months, she has made 74 block and panchayat-level appointments. Congress sources said Priyanka had visited Rae Bareli six times in the past seven months in a bid to strengthen the party further  before the next general elections.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi is also expected to visit Raebareli on May 15 to launch a string of development projects.