The Congress party will form a fact-finding committee that will go into the details of the shock loss in Haryana Assembly polls and also investigate the allegations of ‘internal’ sabotage.
The panel will also verify claims of EVM manipulation. The party has already approached the Election Commission of India alleging discrepancies in some EVMs, and shared a list of seven Assembly constituencies as an example.
The party's top leadership headed by its national president Mallikarjun Kharge held a review meeting to deliberate on the what the party calls ‘unexpected’ results in Haryana.
The Congress party won 37 of the 90 seats in Haryana election, the result of which was declared on October 8. Defying exit polls and beating anti-incumbency of ten years, the saffron party won 48 seats, two more than the majority mark.
Former party chief Rahul Gandhi, AICC general secretary organisation K C Venugopal, AICC senior observers for the polls Ashok Gehlot and Ajay Maken, as well as AICC secretaries for the state, participated in the review meeting at Kharge's 10, Rajaji Marg residence. AICC in-charge of state Deepak Babaria joined the meeting online.
Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who ran the party’s campaign in Haryana, was, however, conspicuous by his absence.
"We held a review meeting on Haryana election results. As you all know, as the exit polls and opinion polls had shown, the results were unexpected. There was a lot of difference between exit polls and actual results. We discussed what could be the reasons for that. We will take appropriate steps going forward on this," Maken told reporters after the meeting, according to a report in news agency PTI.
"There are various reasons, from the Election Commission to internal differences, we have discussed all that will do so in future as well because such a big upset...we cannot discuss everything in one or one-and-a-half hours," he said.
A source present at the meeting said a fact-finding committee will be announced soon as is the convention in the party to analyse the results. The committee will speak with the party's candidates and leaders and detail the reasons for the "unexpected results".
The committee will also look into the details of complaints from various constituencies and compile them in a comprehensive manner.
Sources said Rahul Gandhi who broke his silence on the results on Wednesday, is keen that an in-depth analysis be done of the "unexpected" results and accountability for the shock loss be fixed.
The meeting comes a day after the Congress demanded a thorough probe into "discrepancies" found in some Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during the counting of votes of the Haryana assembly polls and demanded that such EVMs should be sealed and secured pending the inquiry.
Infighting, over-reliance on sitting MLAs and rebel trouble, appeared to be some of the contributing factors for the Congress' failure to make a comeback in Haryana after a decade.
The party appeared confident of dislodging the BJP dispensation which was in power for 10 years and facing anti-incumbency.
(With PTI inputs)
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