New Delhi, Sept. 2: Want to stay in control? Make sure you start at the bottom.

Congress big guns in the capital seem to be working according to this plan, evident from the interest they have shown in the campaigning for the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) elections scheduled for Friday.

At stake — as a source said — is the foundation of the party’s near-total control over all elected bodies in the national capital which it wrested from the BJP.

Last September, the National Students’ Union of India — the Congress’ students’ wing — swept the DUSU elections. It set up the momentum for the party’s spectacular victory in the Delhi Assembly polls three months later that gave Sheila Dikshit a second term as chief minister.

The party also has an overwhelming presence in the municipal corporation. The icing on the cake was the virtual sweep of the recent parliamentary polls in which it won six of the seven Lok Sabha seats.

Its city leadership is determined not to let go of its new-found dominance over the BJP. Beginning with Dikshit, nearly all top shots have been guiding the NSUI leaders for the past one week.

Ashok Gehlot, the AICC general secretary in charge of Delhi affairs and the NSUI, has taken the lead in organising the campaign. The former Rajasthan chief minister is believed to have taken a personal interest in the choice of candidates for the top four posts — that of president, vice-president, general secretary and joint secretary. Sources said he vetoed a candidate of his predecessor Mukul Wasnik, who was general secretary in charge of frontal organisations.

Under Gehlot’s instructions, Congress corporators, MLAs and MPs have had strategy sessions at the party headquarters. All elected representatives, including Union ministers Kapil Sibal and Jagdish Tytler, have held campaign meetings in their constituencies. They are said to have loosened their purse strings as the campaign expenses have touched eight-digit figures against the Rs 10,000 limit fixed for each candidate by the university’s electoral officer.

Gehlot is also believed to have delayed reconstituting NSUI and Youth Congress bodies, apparently to ensure that the attention of the student and youth leaders is not diverted.

According to a Youth Congress source, an internal pre-poll survey has also been conducted to gauge the mood of the students in 50-odd affiliated colleges. The source said Gehlot had intervened to deny renomination to incumbent secretary Ragini Nayak on the basis of the survey that did not give incumbent office-bearers a good rating.