Rushang Gajjal writes:
I wanted the confirmation at the earliest regarding whether they are any chances of me getting shortlisted for GSOC if I start working now so that I can start drafting a Proposal and make a few contributions, Pull Requests.
There's no "shortlisting". You check the issue trackers on Gitlab[1] for "easy" tasks (some labelled as such, many are not) to satisfy the "get something (anything!) merged" requirement, you ask about specific tasks that might become your GSoC project here, you help other people get their work done, and you submit a proposal.
We'll consider you the same as anybody else as long as you get your proposal in by deadline, and evaluate you based on (1) your prospects for completing the work proposed, (2) the degree of potential for future contribution to Mailman that you show, and (3) the importance of your project to the Mailman project. (1) and (2) are definitely more important than (3) in my opinion. Abhilash is authoritative on these matters if you want more assurance than "Steve's opinion".
Steve
Footnotes: [1] Note that there are separate tracker indicies for each subproject if you're not yet familiar with Gitlab. It doesn't matter which subproject you contribute to to satisfy the merge request requirement, since they all use the same process.