Sonia asks partymen to prepare for next round of state elections

Sending a strong message to partymen in the backdrop of the party’s electoral debacle in recent Assembly polls, Congress president Sonia Gandhi exhorted leaders to draw lessons from the poll results, shed factionalism and fight as one disciplined team ahead of state elections in coming months.

"We must draw upon the lessons of the previous polls,” Sonia Gandhi said, while addressing a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party here on Wednesday and stressed, “we must shed all manner of factional behaviour, and fight as one disciplined team at all levels. That will be the single-most important factor to decide whether we win or lose”.

In her first address to party MPs since the January–March Assembly elections in five states, the Congress chief said, "people look to us-- but we need to show them our commitment and our unity if we are to convert this sentiment into electoral victories."
Commenting on the election results in five states, she said, "While we can take satisfaction in the fact that we returned to power in Manipur for the third time and formed the government in Uttarakhand, the results in Punjab and Goa are very disappointing.”
"In Uttar Pradesh, even though we did not perform as well as we had hoped to, we increased our vote share quite considerably and were seen as a serious player for the first time in 22 years," she added.

For the approaching Assembly elections in several states, she asked party MPs to project the work done by Congress-led UPA government and “expose  hollow claims of opposition-ruled states.”

“Maladministration and corruption are widespread in some of these states as revealed by CAG and Lokayukta reports,” Sonia Gandhi said.