Fresh from the humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha elections, where its candidates tasted defeats in all the five parliamentary constituencies, the state unit of Uttarakhand Congress is yet to discuss the reasons for the defeat. The party has now decided to hold a review of its performance on June 18 in Dehradun.
Smarting from the defeat, the state congress was forced into an action mode by Congress President Rahul Gandhi who has asked all the state in charges to submit their report on the Lok Sabha elections. The in- charges were asked to hold brainstorming with their respective Pradesh Congress Committees (PCC) before submitting their report. After this the Uttarakhand PCC decided to convene a meeting on June 10 to hold discussions on the Lok Sabha polls. However on Friday, the meeting was postponed to June 18. In the meeting all the five Lok Sabha candidates, the party MLAs, all those who contested Vidhan Sabha election on party symbol, the districts presidents, Mahanagar presidents and other senior leaders would participate.
The in charge of the state congress, Anugrah Narayan Singh would preside over the meeting.
The Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president, Pritam Singh said that the meeting was postponed after many leaders expressed their inability to attend it due to their preoccupations. “The order was given on a short notice so we have decided to hold the meeting on June 18,’’ he said.
The proposed meeting is expected to be a stormy affair as the grudges of the candidates against some leaders who worked against them are expected to come to fore.
Political observers opine that Congress party should do an in dept analysis and introspection of the severe drubbing it received in the Lok Sabha polls. What is concerning for the Congress is the huge margin of defeats of its candidates and the increasing vote share of BJP.
In the just concluded Lok Sabha elections, BJP won all the five seats by securing a staggering 61 percent of the popular vote. The Congress candidates lagged far behind in all the five seats as they were able to secure only 31.40 percent of the votes.
The huge difference in the vote share of the two parties in Uttarakhand was reflected in the results as in three parliamentary constituencies of Nainital- Udham Singh Nagar, Garhwal and Tehri Garhwal, the victory margins of BJP candidates Ajay Bhat, Teerath Singh Rawat and Mala Rajya Laxmi Shah respectively was more than 3 Lakh. In the remaining two constituencies of Haridwar and Almora too, the BJP candidates trounced the Congress candidates by margin of 258729 and 232986 respectively.