“With great respect Madhusudan Mistry ji How can there be a fair and free election without a publicly available electoral roll? Essence of a fair and free process is names and addresses of electors must be published on the Congress website in a transparent manner,” Tewari said in a series of tweets. He said Mistry, who is the chairman of the Congress’ central election authority is quoted as saying “The list is not made public but if a member of our party wants to check, they can check at the PCC office. And, of course, it will be given to the candidates once they file their nomination papers”.

Congress MP Tharoor, who has expressed his intent to contest the party’s presidential election, agreed with Tewari, and said everybody should know who can nominate and who can vote.

Another Congress leader and MP Karti Chidambaram supported his view, saying every election requires a well defined electoral college. He also said “reformists are not rebels”. Karti also supported the idea of having primaries.