Congress to form group on electoral reverses, Sonia says 'we need to put our house in order'
May 10, 2021
New Delhi [India], May 10 : Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday said a small group will be formed to look at every aspect of party's reverses in three states that went to the polls recently, saying that there is need to take "note of our serious setbacks" and to "candidly understand" why the party failed to dislodge incumbent governments in Kerala and Assam and drew a complete blank in West Bengal.
In her remarks at the meeting of Congress Working Committee convened to take stock of the party's poor performance in the assembly polls, Gandhi said the results tell that "we need to put our house in order".
She said candid stocktaking will yield "uncomfortable lessons," but if the party does not face up the reality, it will not draw the right lessons.
"We have to take note of our serious setbacks. To say that we are deeply disappointed is to make an understatement. I intend to set up a small group to look at every aspect that caused such reverses and report back very quickly. We need to candidly understand why in Kerala and Assam we failed to dislodge the incumbent governments, and why in West Bengal we drew a complete blank. These will yield uncomfortable lessons, but if we do not face up to the reality, if we do not look the facts in the face, we will not draw the right lessons", she said.
During the meeting, she asked general secretaries - Jitender Singh for Assam, Tariq Anwar for Kerala, in charge Dinesh Gundurao for Tamil Nadu and Puducherry and Jitin Prasada for West Bengal to make their presentations.
"I expect them to brief us very frankly on our performance in their respective states. We want them to tell us why we performed well below expectation. These results tell us clearly that we need to put our house in order," she said.
The Congress also did not do well in Puducherry and won only two seats though it was leading the government in the Union Territory two months back. Only in Tamil Nadu, where it rode on populartiy of its bigger ally DMK, did the party perform credibly.
The CWC also decided to temporarily defer organizational elections for electing a new party chief in the wake of "emergent conditions prevailing on account of unprecedented coronavirus pandemic".
