04. Candidate Selection Process Delhi Elections 2013

Note 1: Many of you had requested for a copy of the 'Candidate selection process' in English. So here goes, you can find it in this page. This is just a human corrected version of the translation submitted by Prasad in his comments on the Hindi version. Thanks Prasad!

Note 2: Use of the pronoun forms he, him, himself etc are strictly in the 'manner of speaking' sense and it would be unfortunate if you interpret that as gender bias. In fact, we would like you to try this interesting jail breaking the patriarchy tool on this note :-)

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As the next step in our political revolution, the below process would be followed for selection of candidates for the Delhi Assembly Elections of 2013.

1. 100 voters of any assembly constituency can come together and propose the name of a person they wish to be the candidate for their constinuency. Also, a prospective candidate himself, with the approval of the 100 voters from his consituency, may propose his name. A particular voter may propose the name of a single candidate only.

2. Application forms can be downloaded online or can be obtained from any of our party offices.

3. After filling in all details asked for in the application form, one can deposit it at the party head quarters with Mr. Dilip Pandey, Secretary, Selection Committee (Address: A -119, Kaushambi, Ghaziabad). This can be done on any day after the 15th of April 2013, between 10am and 5pm (except for Sundays). Any correspondence regarding the candidate selection process will happend from this same office.

4. A screening committee has been created by the party to work on this process. Members of this screening committee are -

1. Manish Sisodia

2. Sanjay Singh

3. Vinod Kumar Binny

4. Rajan Prakash

5. Dilip K Pandey

6. Nisha Singh

7. Ashish Talwar

8. Kishore Asthana

9. BS Dhanola

10. Rahul Mehra

11. Abhay Singh

12. Vinay Mittal

5. After the 5th of May, the screening committee will start the process of putting together a short list of a maximum of 5 candidates from eacy constituency, from among all the applications received. For the purpose of creating such a short list, the screening committee will have one-on-one interactions with all the applicants and will also take inputs from various sources such as - active volunteers, journalists, reputated citizens and more. The decision of the screening committee will be final in shortlisting candidates. Ater releasing a shortlist, candidate applications will not be received for that particular constituency.

6. The above shortlist will be promoted in the public domain by various means such as - releasing it online, campaign by party workers and other media, and opinion on the candidates will be sought from active party volunteers and the public at large. Everybody will be allowed to share their views, good or bad, about any candidate, and would also be invited to submit proof of any wrong-doings by the shortlisted candidates. Such submissions can be made online or sent directly to the party office.

7. The screening committee will take congnisance of every information/opinion that is shared, and on receiving evidence-backed negative information about a candidate, strike out the name of such candidates and release an updated shortlist.

8. Aam Aadmi Party is a recently formed political outfit. There are many people who have now participated and contributed for a long time as volunteers in this movement, but have not been formally enrolled as party members. All such volunteers will be indentified/declared as 'active volunteers' and their opinion will be sought on the shortlist of candidates.

Post this, such 'active volunteers' would gather together at constituency level meetings and would rank the candidates by means of preferential voting. This process would be carried out by a secret ballot, the results of which would be made available to the political affairs committee. At the moment, the number of active volunteers at each constituency is not significantly large. For this reason, we do not plan to release the outcome of the preferential ranking vote and rather only submit it to the political affairs committee as an input.

9. Next, the political affairs committee will have one-on-one interaction with each of the shortlisted candidates.

10. Preferential voting by active volunteers will bring forward the popularity of candidates. While personal interaction with the screening and political committee will be used to determine if the candidate is - courageous, has a vision for bringing in systemic change in Delhi, understands all aspects and nuances of direct democracy (swaraj), has learned opinions on broad range of issues, has respect for every caste and religion etc. Considering the popularity of all candidates, their thoughts on various issues and opinion held by the public at large about them - the political affairs committee will take the decision on who would be the candidate from a particular constituency.