Congress’s fact-finding panel to probe the reasons for Congress defeat due to EVM discrepancies have been denied by most of the contestants who blamed internal sabotage by the senior party leaders group as the prime reason for the unexpected results in recent assembly polls in Haryana state. The party’s top leadership headed by Rahul Gandhi and its national president Mallikarjun Kharge held a review meeting to deliberate on the what the party calls ‘unexpected’ results in Haryana Assembly polls in-spite of Congress wave and all media Exit Polls in favour of party, and also investigate the allegations of ‘internal’ sabotage caused shock loss in Haryana Assembly polls. The panel has also approached the Election Commission of India alleging discrepancies in some EVMs, and shared a list of seven Assembly constituencies as an example. The Congress party had won 37 of the 90 seats in Haryana election, the result of which was declared on October 8. Defying exit polls, opinion polls and beating anti-incumbency of ten years, the saffron party won 48 seats, two more than the majority mark.
Former party chief Rahul Gandhi, AICC general secretary organisation K C Venugopal, AICC senior observers for the polls Ashok Gehlot and Ajay Maken, as well as AICC secretaries for the state, participated in the review meeting at Kharge’s residence. AICC in-charge of state Deepak Babaria joined the meeting online and has also resigned due to the defeat. According to most of the contestants, lack of coordination between senior Congress leaders Bhupinder Singh Hooda, AICC General Secretary Kumari Selja and Randeep Surjewala. Sources said Rahul Gandhi who broke his silence on the results is keen that an in-depth analysis be done of the unexpected results and accountability for the shock loss be fixed. The committee will speak with the party’s candidates and leaders, looking into the details of complaints from various constituencies and compile them in a comprehensive manner and detail the reasons for the unexpected result in the recent assembly election in Haryana, since assembly polls have also been scheduled shortly for another two states in the country.
It has been confirmed that apart from infighting between party leaders, refusal of tickets to some sitting MLAs contested polls as an independent candidate against Congress candidate and rebel trouble in which support was given to the BJP candidates, appeared to be some of the contributing factors for the Congress’ failure to make a comeback in Haryana after a decade. Information reveals that lack of coordination by former Union Minister & HPCC president Kumari Selja MP Sirsa as well as Randeep Surjewala feeling themselves neglected by the party, tickets not offered to the the candidates of their choice too remained away during poll publicity campaigns, also proved harmful for the Congress candidates lost support of large number of ‘Dalit’ voters.
