3 min readNew DelhiFeb 18, 2026 09:16 AM IST
As Assembly elections in Assam draw near, Congress general secretary and MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who is heading the screening committee for party candidates in the state, will be travelling to Guwahati Thursday for meetings over two days with Congress leaders and the screening panel.
Vadra has put in place a “new system” where committee members are required to travel extensively in the state to get feedback on probable candidates. The committee members are MPs Saptagiri Sankar Ulaka, Imran Masood, and senior leader Sirivella Prasad. They are tasked with shortlisting candidates and steering internal consultations ahead of polls.
A source in the Congress told The Indian Express that Vadra’s “new system” for the screening committee which is an experiment and is likely to be treated like a “pilot project” to be emulated in other state elections.
“Generally, the screening committee meets the state election committee (SEC) in Delhi, and senior leaders from the state are called to the national capital. But what Priyanka ji has done is that she has assigned five districts each to the three members of the committee and has directed them to travel to these districts to gather feedback from local leaders and other stakeholders. The three leaders are already travelling in the three districts meeting local cadre, civil society members and local journalists. These are all closed-door meetings, and the findings will be shared with the screening committee when it meets,” the source said.
A senior leader in the AICC told The Indian Express that if Vadra’s experiment proves to be fruitful and if the system works well, the party may consider emulating it in future state elections.
“Irrespective of how we do in the Assam polls in terms of winning seats, this system could be emulated in other upcoming elections,” the leader said.
While the exercise is underway in Upper Assam, the remaining parts of the state will be covered later. “The division has also been done based on social engineering of the districts. While Masood has been mostly assigned districts with sizeable Muslim population, Ulaka has been given some districts with a large population of tribal communities since he is a tribal leader himself,” the source said.
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While Masood has been assigned Dibrugarh, Dhemaji, Tinsukia, Biswanath, and Udalguri, Ulaka has been asked to screen probables from Majuli, Jorhat, Golaghat, Karbi Anglong and Nagaon, it is learnt. Prasad, the third member of the committee, has been assigned Charaideo, Sivasagar, Lakhimpur, Sonitpur, and Darrang.
Masood, who is MP from UP’s Saharanpur, told The Indian Express: “We are traveling to each and every district and meeting all kinds of people – political and non-political. We are doing one-on-one meetings with local cadre and also aspiring candidates. We will be submitting our findings to the screening committee chair (Vadra) soon.”
In the 2021 elections to the 126-seat Assembly, the Congress managed to win 29 seats out of the 95 it contested, while the BJP secured 60 of the 93 seats it contested.
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