Ex MLA blames Gujarat Cong chief Jagdish Thakor for drubbing in 2022 polls

Gujarat Congress former MLA Raghu Desai accuses state president Jagdish Thakor of working against the party during the just concluded state assembly elections. Desai said that besides Kharge, he has also informed party leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi by writing to them also.

Ahmedabad: Gujarat Congress leader and former MLA Raghu Desai has written to party president Mallikarjun Kharge accusing state president Jagdish Thakor of working against the party during the just concluded state assembly elections in which the party suffered a drubbing. Desai said that besides Kharge, he has also informed party leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi by writing to them also.

"We lost in Gujarat because our party president Jagdish Thakor and his men have worked against us,” Desai said. Desai said that Thakor has no “control over the people working against the party”. Pertinently, the Congress has begun emergency zone-wise meetings in Gujarat to analyse the drubbing in the recently declared Assembly elections.

An important meeting of the north Gujarat zone, including Ahmedabad, was held at Paldi Pradesh Congress Bhavan on Monday in which the winning and losing candidates of Congress besides the state president participated. The candidates, sources said, expressed their grievances at the meeting regarding the defeat.

Congress won 17 seats while the BJP won 156 with AAP winning five seats on its Gujarat debut. At Tuesday's meeting, a few Congress leaders accused the BJP of using money power to win over the voters. The leaders also expressed concern over the “sudden increase in polling at the last minute” which they said also affected the outcome.

A meeting to this effect has been planned on December 13 to be followed by a special meeting of the South Zone on December 14 and Saurashtra Zone on 15.