Congress rout ravages revival hopes

Clean Sweep: Rahul Gandhi's leadership questioned within party once again

The Congress' complete rout in the Delhi Assembly elections has made its revival only tougher.

It has also put a fresh question mark on the leadership of Rahul Gandhi in steering the party out of gloom after the Congress’ successive electoral losses.

An immediate fallout of the elections were the resignations by P C Chacko, the AICC general secretary in-charge of Delhi, Ajay Maken, and AICC general secretary and chairman of the Congress’ Campaign Committee and Delhi unit chief Arvinder Singh Lovely from their posts.

Several Congress leaders pointed out the failure of Team Rahul to connect with the electorate at a time when party president Sonia Gandhi is mulling passing on the baton to her son.

A bunch of Congress activists lost no opportunity to raise “Priyanka Lao” (Bring Priyanka) slogans outside the party headquarters here.

Congress leaders expressed concern over the rapid erosion of its committed vote share in the national capital to a dismal 9.7 per cent this time. While the party had polled 24 per cent votes in the December 2013 Delhi elections, its vote share slipped to 15 per cent in the Lok Sabha elections.

“We knew it would go wrong, but to such an extent, we had not imagined,” said a stunned Chacko, as the Congress failed to win even a single seat in the 70-member Delhi Assembly.

A quick analysis showed lack of organisation and failure by the party to connect with the electorate as the key reasons for the defeat.

“We should admit that we did not keep our house in order. If you do not work at the grass-roots and concentrate only on the top, this will be the outcome,” said a senior leader.

The shock defeat comes just ahead of the Assembly elections in Bihar this year, in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala next year, and in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttarakhand and Punjab in 2017.  The Congress is already a marginal player in most of these states.

“This loss has registered strongly with us, and we will take all steps to establish our connect with the people,” said a Congress statement not attributed to any functionary.

Chacko, Maken and Lovely—the key players of the party's Delhi campaign—are expected to meet Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday to analyse the defeat.