Battered Congress asks cadre to not 'panic' over recent poll losses & stick to its 'narrative' at CWC meet

New Delhi: Battered in a clutch of state elections, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) on Friday asked its cadre not to get "disheartened or panic" over the recent electoral reverses and stick to its "narrative", even as party chief Mallikarjun Kharge talked about "tough decisions" needed to strengthen the faltering organisation.

The four-and-half hour long meeting of the (CWC) deliberated on what went wrong with the party after Lok Sabha elections, which provided a "new enthusiasm", with Kharge bluntly telling leaders how lack of unity, statements against each other and talking “negatively and depressingly” about not having a narrative are harming the party “a lot”.

Congress General Secretary (Organisation) KC Venugopal told a press conference that the party has decided to constitute internal committees to look into electoral performance and organisational matters at the block and district level. 

Eighty-one leaders, including party's Chief Ministers and Deputy Chief Ministers attended the meeting where Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi insisted that the party and leaders need to be clear where it stands.

Sources said he touched upon organisational issues in detail and said the impressive performance in Lok Sabha elections were due to the "narrative" they built around social justice. He told the meeting that "our position is important" as the BJP is disturbed by it.

In an apparent reference to the times of the 1969 split, sources said he recalled Indira Gandhi's time when the organisation stood on one side and Indira on the other side "with people". He said the former Prime Minister was on the side of the people and "we should be with the people".

Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said she has been hearing about leaders talking about what went wrong after every electoral defeat while insisting on rebuilding the organisation at the grassroot level. Sources said Priyanka asked who was stopping party in-charges in states from acting and forming booth and block committees. 

Admitting that Congress' performance was “below expectations” in Haryana, Maharashtra, Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand though I.N.D.I.A bloc managed to win two of them, Kharge said in his opening remarks that they need to “immediately learn from the election results and correct all our weaknesses and shortcomings” at the organisational level. 

“After achieving encouraging results in the Lok Sabha elections, we have suffered a setback in the Assembly elections. That is why we will have to take tough decisions...You have to see what your political opponent is doing on a daily basis. We have to take decisions on time. Accountability has to be fixed,” he said.

“The most important thing that I say again and again is that lack of mutual unity and rhetoric against each other harms us a lot. Unless we fight elections unitedly and stop making statements against each other, how will we be able to defeat our opponents politically?” he said in apparent reference, especially to the developments in Haryana ahead of elections.

Amid some leaders criticising the party over its campaign themes, he defended the narrative set at national level, saying that, “sometimes we ourselves become our biggest enemy. We will talk negatively and depressingly about ourselves and say that we do not have any narrative, then I ask whose responsibility is it to create the narrative and convey it to the public?”

A resolution adopted at the CWC asked Congress' organisation at all levels to "summon the maximum strength and resilience at this juncture", as there is "no reason to get disheartened or panic". 

"The issues the party placed before the people during the Bharat Jodo Yatra, the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra and the Lok Sabha election campaign are the issues of daily concern to the people of our country. The party must keep reinforcing its narrative," it said, identifying caste census, removal of the 50% ceiling on quota, control of growing monopolies in the economy through political patronage and continuing price rise and growing unemployment as the main issues.