After the dismal performance in just concluded assembly polls of five States including within Hindi heartland, top Congress leadership during the last two days held separate meetings to review the party’s performance in  Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Rajasthan and Mizoram.

Of the five states which went to polls last month the Congress could wrest power only on Telangana while it lost Rajasthan and Chhatisgarh and failed to dislodge BJP Govt in MP.

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

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

 The party first reviewed the humiliating defeat in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

While the meeting was said to be cordial, sources said those at the helm of affairs in both the states came in for harsh criticism.

While the Madhya Pradesh campaign was led by PCC president Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh, the election efforts in Chhattisgarh were led by the Congress’s incumbent chief minister, Bhupesh Baghel.

 Sources said state party leaders flagged complacency, the lack of coordination and unity, the lack of resources, the failure to counter the BJP campaign and the inability to take the Congress promises to the people as the reasons for the defeat.

In Madhya Pradesh, Nath is under pressure to step down as party chief. Sources said he too is not keen to continue.

 After the meeting, Chhattisgarh Congress election in-charge Kumari Selja told mediapersons that their women candidates had performed well and asserted the party will do better in the Lok Sabha elections.

“We gave tickets to 18 women, out of which 11 won.

The media, agencies and everyone said we were winning in Chhattisgarh, and to some extent they were right as our vote percentage did not change much.

There are plenty of reasons which are being reviewed. We have not lost the trust of the people. We will win more seats in the Lok Sabha elections.” 

AICC general secretary in-charge of Madhya Pradesh Randeep Surjewala said: “We openly discussed the reasons for the party’s defeat and leaders analysed the shortcomings of the party… The Congress president heard us patiently.

All the leaders authorised him to take a decision on how to strengthen the organisation.

We urged him to hold a meeting of the Congress Legislature Party in Madhya Pradesh and appoint an observer for its next meeting to enable it to elect the new Leader of the Opposition.”

 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 for Rajasthan.

AICC general secretary, organisation, K C Venugopal were also present at the review 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, 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 “we will fix accountability”.

 AICC in-charge for Mizoram Bhakt Charan Das later 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.