Congress Holds Review Meeting After Rajasthan, Mizoram Poll Debacle

Top Congress leadership on Saturday held separate meetings to review the party’s performance in the assembly polls in Rajasthan and Mizoram.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge convened the review meeting at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters in Delhi where former party chief Rahul Gandhi and other senior leaders were also present.

While the review meeting for Mizoram was held earlier, the leaders from Rajasthan, including former Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and other senior leaders, attended the review meeting.

Rahul Gandhi and AICC general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal were present at the meeting.

AICC in-charge for Rajasthan Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa said, “Our vote share was also a little less than the BJP and it also improved a little bit from the last time.”

“Many of our candidates lost by a narrow margin and we told the senior leaders that we would start our preparations for the parliamentary elections from today itself. We will look into our shortcomings and work on them. We assured the leadership that we would fight the BJP unitedly in the Lok Sabha elections. The Congress fought the election in Rajasthan unitedly,” he told reporters after the meeting.

The leadership felt that it was after a long time that the Congress party had performed very well in Rajasthan. After a long time, the party got so many seats, he said.

On whether he offered to resign as in-charge of Rajasthan, Mr Randhawa said, “I told the leadership that I was there only till the elections as I have to concentrate on Punjab also.”

“I had said earlier that I would be there till the assembly elections. How we were left behind, we will look into this,” he said while asserting that the party “will fix accountability”.

AICC in-charge for Mizoram Bhakt Charan Das said, “We discussed every aspect of the Mizoram election, including the organisational structure of the state at the grassroots level and state level, as well as the various events that occurred during the elections.”

“We also deliberated on our future plans. All these matters were carefully and intensively discussed,” he said.

Saturday was the second day of review of election results where the Congress failed to win in the just concluded assembly elections.