Congress high level committee meets on Assembly poll setbacks

NEW DELHI: In view on performance of the party in the latest round of Assembly Elections, the Congress party is on an introspection mode to try and ascertain the reasons behind the defeat. Congress president Sonia Gandhi chaired the meet being held at the party’s HQ today. Party general secretaries, including Rahul Gandhi, are attending the meeting. The meeting is signifi cant, especially because of the poor performance of the party in Uttar Pradesh, where Rahul had himself steered the campaign. It was a series of mistakes that appeared to have cost dearly to Rahul’s ‘Mission UP 2012’. They included off the cuff remarks, controversial comments and raking up of sentimental issues by senior party leaders including Union ministers. Even Amethi and Rae Bareli, the pocket boroughs of Gandhi-Nehru family, gave a shocker to the party as it managed to win only two of the ten Assembly seats in these twin Lok Sabha constituencies represented by Rahul and Sonia Gandhi. Despite Rahul’s herculean efforts, the Congress could at the most manage just 28 seats in the 403-member House. It has won 20 and was leading in eight seats. The young Gandhi scion did owe up responsibility for the defeat but the story is far from over as the Congress is very well aware that it has improve its performance in UP for any reasonable chance to retain power at the Centre post 2014. Other than UP, the outcome in Punjab, Goa has also been a dampener despite the fact that it retained Manipur and emerged the single largest party in Uttarakhand, where it could grab power. In Punjab, Congress wanted to ride the anti-incumbency wave but was handed out a shock defeat by the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP. Restricting the Congress to just 46 in the 117-member House, the ruling combine bagged 68 seats, just one less than last time. The defeat in Punjab was a setback for the party as the leadership had go to the extent of declaring senior leader Amarinder Singh as the chief ministerial candidate, something rare in Congress. However, during the meeting today, the focus would be on UP poll debacle more than any other state. A section of the party contends that the 4.5 per cent reservation for minorities decided by the Congress-led coalition at the Centre just a few days before the announcement of the election schedule did more harm than good. This section says that detractors of the party were quick to project the move as one detrimental to interests of backward Muslims in UP. The statements of Union Minister Salman Khurshid on the Muslim sub-quota issue added fuel to fi re and at the same time antagonised the Election Commission. The statements of Union ministers Beni Prasad Verma and Sriprakash Jaiswal did not help matters. The raking up of the Batla encounter issue by Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh also appeared not to have gone down well with the Muslims. Such statements appeared to have helped the BJP to polarise voters to a certain extent. Party leaders insist that sizable support from Muslims in the 2009 elections had ensured Congress victory in as many as 22 Lok Sabha seats giving the fi rst signs of revival of the organisation in its one-time bastion. But the Muslims may have shifted away this time, they feel. In almost all of these 22 Lok Sabha seats, Muslim vote was crucial ranging from two to three Lakh and in constituencies like Moradabad it was up to six Lakh. At that time, a sizable section of Muslims was having second thoughts in backing Mulayam Singh Yadav as the SP supremo had tied up with Kalyan Singh who was the BJP chief minister during demolition of Babri Masjid in December 1992.