New Delhi:Groupism among senior Haryana leaders, priority to self-interest over party and the presence of sponsored rebels on over a dozen seats were identified as the main reasons behind the Congress debacle in the Assembly polls during a high-level review meeting chaired by the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and party chief Mallikarjun Kharge.
Besides Rahul and Kharge, AICC in-charge of organisation KC Venugopal, AICC treasurer Ajay Maken and AICC observer for the state elections former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot. AICC in-charge of Haryana Dipak Babaria, who is not well, attended the review meeting online.
“Factional fights in public during the campaign despite a warning by the high command, priority to self-interest over party among senior leaders and the presence of sponsored rebel candidates on over a dozen seats certainly damaged the party,” a senior AICC functionary said.
On Thursday, Independent MLA from Bahadurgarh seat Rajesh Joon, who contested as a Congress rebel, extended support to the BJP.
According to party insiders, Rahul, who conducted a foot march across several seats towards the last leg of the campaign to clinch Haryana, is miffed over the election outcome and wants to reach the bottom of the causes that led to the shocking result.
The state leadership, including Haryana Congress chief Udai Bhan and CLP leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda, were not called for the high-level review meeting deliberately and a fact-finding team to be set up by Kharge soon will talk to them separately, said party insiders.
The fact-finding team would also talk to each of the 89/90 Congress candidates one-on-one to assess the factors that led to the debacle of the party. The Congress had left one seat for ally CPI(M). Action will follow after the probe panel submits its report to Kharge.
“The Haryana results are being taken seriously by the party. The outcome was discussed in detail. Both Rahul Gandhi and Kharge are keen to identify the causes behind the poll result that has shocked not only the workers, but also our supporters,” AICC secretary in-charge of Haryana Manoj Chauhan told ETV Bharat.
Rahul Gandhi called the review meeting on Thursday as Congress was anticipating winning a two-thirds majority in Haryana, but was limited to just 37 seats at a time when all internal surveys had predicted a sweep for the grand old party.
Party insiders said that though there was a strong suspicion that the ruling BJP tinkered with the electronic voting machines on several seats, it was also important to understand what went wrong within the Congress system to ensure that such mistakes do not occur during the forthcoming Assembly elections in Maharashtra, where the saffron party is part of the ruling coalition and in Jharkhand, where the saffron party has been trying to destabilise the ruling JMM-Congress-RJD coalition.
“The INDIA alliance is strong in the state. Rahul Gandhi and Kharge discussed the ensuing elections with Chief Minister Hemant Soren and his MLA wife Kalpana Soren on October 9. A seat-sharing formula would soon be announced by the alliance, which is already taking the various welfare schemes to the voters,” AICC secretary in-charge of Jharkhand Saptagiri Ulaka told ETV Bharat.
