Infighting, alliance key to Congress defeat in recent elections: Panel

The Congress committee formed to analyse debacle in recently concluded elections in five states has submitted its report to the Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

The committee was headed by Ashok Chavan and has members like Salman Khurshid, Manish Tewari, Vincent Pala and Jothi Mani.

Sources say that the committee in its report has mentioned infighting, alliance and flaws in candidate selection as the main reason for the Congress defeat.

The committee said that no state was untouched with the infighting including Assam, while Kerala was top in the infighting list where two groups led by Oommen Chandy and Ramesh Chennithala were at loggerheads.

In Assam many blamed for the alliance with AIUDF as main reason for reverse polarization while some said that alliance with AIUDF was beneficial, but some of the party leaders have blamed Jitendra Singh, in charge of the state for not taking the state leaders into confidence while deciding on campaigning and alliance and said that issues regarding upper Assam was neglected.

The Congress panel was told about several new faces in Kerala which led to the party's bad performance in the state while in West Bengal the alliance was too late and polarisation between the BJP and the TMC led to the party's debacle in the state. The Congress leaders were miffed with the way state president acted without consultations.

Sources said, Congress' media management was not up to the mark.

The Congress panel has also made some recommendations for the upcoming state elections in five states.

Interim Congress President Sonia Gandhi on May 11 constituted a committee to analyse the reasons for the party's losses in the recently concluded assembly polls.

Sonia Gandhi had said in the CWC meet: "We need to candidly understand why we failed to dislodge the incumbent governments in Kerala and Assam, and we drew a complete blank in West Bengal."

--IANS

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