Congress panel analysing 'disappointing' Lok Sabha election results in Karnataka to visit state on July 11

The panel, which was one of the six committees chosen to evaluate election performance in eight states, was appointed by Mallikarjun Kharge.

New Delhi: The three-member fact-finding committee of Congress to analyse what went wrong in Lok Sabha elections in Karnataka will embark on a three-day visit to the state from July 11 to meet leaders to elicit their views on the not- so-favourable performance in the polls.

Senior leaders - Madhusudan Mistry, Gaurav Gogoi and Hibi Eden - already had discussed the modalities to be followed during their interactions in Karnataka and decided to visit the state from July 11, sources said.

The panel, which was one of the six committees chosen to evaluate election performance in eight states, was appointed by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge. The Congress president appointed these panels after finding out that the party performance in Karnataka and seven other states where voters “traditionally favoured” were not up to the mark.

In Karnataka, Congress won only nine out of 28 seats, despite returning to power in the state in May last year with a thumping 136 seats.

Sources said that the Karnataka panel will look into whether candidate selection, in which 16 candidates were from political families, impacted results and how the guarantee scheme worked electorally. It will interact with state leaders.

A Congress Working Committee resolution on June 8 had said it would be “failing in its duty if it did not take note of the disappointing performance” in some states and “urgent steps” should and will be taken to “address the shortcomings” in the states where the party had “every reason to hope for a better result but where that expectation was not fulfilled”.

Kharge had told the CWC, “While we celebrate the revival, we should pause a little as in some states we have not performed to our abilities and expectations. Further, we could not repeat our performance in states where we had previously done well in the Assembly elections and formed the government.”