Reeling under the ignominious defeat, its worst ever, the Congress is grappling with strong dissent within its ranks even as speculations gained on Saturday about Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi likely to resign from the CWC, the meeting of which is scheduled for Monday.
Congress leaders, however, said even if the resignations are offered, there’s no chance of them being accepted. Nevertheless, daggers are out in the party with several leaders in private criticising Rahul’s key advisers, besides the campaign style undertaken by the party where the old guards were completely sidelined.
The role of the Chief Ministers of 12 Congress-ruled States, including Karnataka and Maharashtra — where the party performed badly — would also be discussed. “What measures they took to check corruption and price control, which were part of the 14-point agenda set by Rahul Gandhi few months ahead of the polls, too would be discussed,” sources said.
Sources said the pitch for a change of guard and organisational structure in these States would also be reviewed, which was done by the Gandhi-scion without any “democratic” deliberations from the “elders” and “seniors”.Some leaders have chosen to go public finding fault with the ticket distribution while others privately questioned the role of Jairam Ramesh, Mohan Gopal, Madhusudan Mistry, Mohan Prakash and Ajay Maken - all Rahul’s key men.
Special Invitee to the CWC Anil Shastri, rued that some of the Congress candidates left the party after they were given tickets, which calls for a serious look at the way tickets were given. He said that Rahul had earlier said that party hoppers won’t be given tickets on a platter after joining Congress but this was done in a number of cases and hence, those who did it, in defiance of the Congress vice-president’s view, should face the music. He said he would be writing a letter to Rahul in a couple of days listing the reasons, which according to him, led to this kind of defeat for the Congress.
Accepting responsibility for the poll debacle, Sonia and Rahul have conceded that the mandate in the lok Sabha polls was “clearly against” Congress and said there was “lot for us to think about”. The party has obtained a blank in seven States/UTs, once its stronghold. The Congress will now be without a representative in the new legislative Assembly in Seemandhra where it failed to win a single seat, swept aside by a strong wave against the party in the wake of bifurcation of the State.
Amid murmurs in the party against Rahul’s functioning, a senior leader dismissed suggestions about the “waning” impact of the Gandhi family saying, “We have seen how Congress fared without the family”. The lok Sabha results, like the Delhi Assembly poll results, have sent shockwaves through the party. There is a view that Congress has paid the price for not having strong regional leaders.
Citing an instance, a senior leader said that former Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh showed his mettle in Amritsar by handing out a convincing defeat to BJP leader Arun Jaitley. Downplaying suggestions that the party’s unprecedented poor show put question mark on the leadership of Rahul, but Jairam Ramesh and senior party leader Satyavrat Chaturvedi have maintained it was a collective responsibility.
The vote share for Congress slumped below 20 per cent for the first time in the history of the country’s lok Sabha elections triggering an unprecedented debacle while it crossed 30 per cent for the BJP to record a new high. A nine per cent decline in the Congress’ vote share to 19.3 per cent in the just concluded elections for the 16th lok Sabha from its showing in the 2009 polls saw the party lose 162 seats to get only 44, according to an analysis of results for the 16th lok Sabha elections.