Union Labour Minister Mallikarjun Kharge said on Monday that lack of unity in the Karnataka ranks of the Congress party was the reason for its defeat in the 2008 Assembly election.

Kharge made the admission at a programme organised by the Party’s backward classes unit on the birth anniversary of late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and formetr chief minister D Devaraj Urs.

Kharge reasoned that if all the Congress party had worked unitedly, then the BJP would not have managed to win the election. As many as 34 legislators who were ministers in former chief minister S M Krishna’s Cabinet were defeated he said, reminding everyone that it was the lack of unity which made the party lose the polls.

The party feliciated its senior leader Kagodu Thimmappa, advocate Ravi Varma Kumar and retired Karnataka Administrative Services officer J Srinivasan by presenting them with the D Devaraj Urs award.

Ravi Varma Kumar said the National Backward Classes Commission should get constitutional status, and that there should be reservation in promotion for backward classes.

The government must do away with hiring people on contract basis, he said.  G Parameshwara, president of Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee, said he was surprised to find Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) workers amidst North-Easterners fleeing Bangalore at the Bangalore City railway station last week, instead of the city’s policemen.