Upset by the worst-ever poll failure, the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) held a review meeting here on Thursday to find out what went wrong and why the party’s tally in the Assembly slumped to a single digit, i.e., nine.

AICC general secretary and Odisha in-charge Jeetendra Singh and senior party leader from Chhattisgarh TS Singh Deo attended the meeting.

PCC president Niranjan Patnaik told reporters, “In the first session, discussions took place with all the winning and losing candidates. Later, senior party leaders discussed about the steps for reviving the Congress which has lost the trust of the people in the State. I also shared my experiences of the last one year as the PCC chief.”

Replying to a question on selection of his son Navajyoti as the party candidate for the Baleswar Lok Sabha seat, Patnaik said he did not visit Baleswar even once after the AICC announced his son’s nomination.

“My son was made the candidate on the basis of a decision of the AICC on the recommendation of the Baleswar District Congress Committee. The allegation that I had recommended my son’s name is completely baseless,” he said.

Patnaik is in the firing line after the party’s miserable performance in both the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. The Congress could only win the Koraput Lok Sabha seat by a slender margin of 3,613 votes. The PCC chief has already offered to step down from his post owning moral responsibility for the party’s poll debacles.

The review meeting assumes significance after AICC president Rahul Gandhi targeted senior leaders for putting their sons above the interest of the party.

However, newly-elected MLA from Jatni Suresh Kumar Routray came to Patnaik’s defence stating that all the State leaders are responsible for the electoral debacle. He urged all leaders to leave Bhubaneswar and visit constituencies in order to build their bases at the grassroots level.