Assembly polls: Lack of unity among senior leaders has emerged as the key issue, Sonia Gandhi told

NEW DELHI: Congress general secretaries and independent observers deputed by party president Sonia Gandhi have blamed the drubbing in recent assembly elections on bitter infighting and sabotage by factions within the organisation.

The party lost four of the five states that went to the polls mainly because it failed to put up a united fight, general secretaries BK Hariprasad ( Chhattisgarh), Mohan Prakash ( Madhya Pradesh), Shakeel Ahmad (Delhi) and Gurudas Kamat (Rajasthan) have said in their confidential reports to Gandhi.

A senior Congress leader said although the reports acknowledged factors such as the emergence of AAP in Delhi, late implementation of government schemes in Rajasthan and sentiment against sitting MLAs in Chhattisgarh, the lack of unity among the senior leaders in the states had emerged as the key issue.

In Chhattisgarh, for instance, the internal report says though the party took its rebellious former chief minister Ajit Jogi on board in ticket distribution exercise, the attempts proved futile since the rival leaders ran separate campaigns. “There were many factors.

We did not read the undercurrent properly. Of the 36 sitting MLAs, 27 lost,” said a party leader from the state, adding, “We could not read this antiincumbency against our own MLAs properly. But the most important factor was infighting.

We could not bring together the Ajit Jogi faction and the others. All of us fought separate battles.” Chhattisgarh Congress chief Charan Das Mahant did not mince words either as he told ET that “internal sabotage” did the party in.

Even in MP, the party struggled to keep its flock together. The post-mortem on the state polls says senior leaders did not campaign extensively in all constituencies and stuck to their pocket boroughs. While the central leadership felt the campaign committee incharge Jyotiraditya Scindia should have been entrusted with the job at least six months before the elections, the internal report points out that the young leader did not get enough support from senior ministers and leaders hailing from the state.

In Delhi, three-term chief minister Sheila Dikshit has already lashed out against her bête-noire, Congress’ Delhi unit president JP Agarwal. A day after losing her seat and presiding over the party’s worst performance in Delhi, Dikshit on Monday said she did not get enough support from her party.

A senior leader told ET, “We have the names of these people who indulged in sabotage during elections. We did not take action against them during the electoral process as they could have harmed the party even more.

But now that the process is over we will seek explanations and take action against them.” The report on Rajasthan says that while the party identified very good candidates in the state some disappointed rebel leaders worked actively against the official nominees.

Another reason for the party’s crushing defeat, as identified by observers and the general secretary in charge, was the non-implementation of certain schemes at the grassroots.