NEW DELHI: The Congress high command is set to give a silent burial to vice-president Rahul Gandhi ’s much highlighted pitch for holding “transparent party organisational elections through internal ballots”. Instead, “maximum possible consensus” will be the yardstick that shall drive the upcoming organisational elections in the district, PCC and AICC levels, informed sources said.This follows a major section of the leaders arguing that in this hour of crisis for Congress, the attempt should be to ensure maximum internal unity of the party rather than risking further divisions by holding bitter battles of ballots.Further, as the entrenched Congress brass continue to firmly hold the strings of organisation by commanding maximum support in party committees at all levels in the states, there are now even fears that many of Gandhi’s recently handpicked PCC chiefs such as VM Sudheeran in Kerala, Ashok Tanwar in Haryana, Arun Yadav in MP, Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan, etc., too could find themselves in a spot if faced with a “battle of ballots”.Some of them too are now pitching for “consensus polls” and are trying to buy peace with the entrenched seniors by “constituting please-all party committees”. In Kerala, loyalists of Oomman Chandy-Ramesh Chennithala factional axis are openly challenging the “un-compromising” Sudheeran to face “a contest” for renewing his PCC stewardship, sending warning signals to AICC.“Our attempt will be to hold fair organisational elections that will ensure balanced accommodation of all sections of the party and its social base. The attempt would be to find genuine consensus, and failing which, there will be contests,” said an AICC functionary while pointing out that “Congress president Sonia Gandhi recently naming, in the run-up to membershipdrive for organizational polls, new PCC chiefs in Assam, Goa and Orissa reflects the leadership’s preference for such consensus approaches”.The Congress high command has already subtly done away with, during the state polls, two other failed experiments that Team Rahul had introduced during Lok Sabha polls—holding primaries to select party candidates and holding street meetings to frame party election manifesto.Gandhi and a set of his advisors have been insisting that Congress organisation too must follow the same kind of “organizational experiments “ they had introduced in Indian Youth Congress (IYC).ET had reported on November 5 that many senior Congress functionaries told Gandhi during a series of brainstorming sessions he held with them—to work out post-defeat strategy— that his experiments with the IYC organisational elections had done more harm than good and a similar exercise at the Congress rotational level will only weaken what is required most at this critical juncture: maximum internal unity and harmony.The leadership has also decided to amend the party’s constitution to make the office bearers’ term back to three years from the current five years.