Election results: Party organisation weak in UP, will correct mistakes- Sonia Gandhi

NEW DELHI: The party's organisational structure in Uttar Pradesh was weak, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said on Wednesday. Addressing reporters she said that wrong choice of candidates had also contributed to the party's debacle in the state assembly elections.

She vowed to "correct the mistakes" that led to a mid-term drubbing for the Congress in the state elections.

Sonia said, "We will have to sit down and look at the situation and the results in every single state and together work out a plan to correct the mistakes we have made. We expected to do better in Punjab."

Sonia said that every election was a lesson for the Congress and party's focus is now on the 2014 general elections. She reiterated that the poll debacle will not affect UPA.

With the Tuesday tragedy, Congress seems to have entered a phase of decline after the upswing since the Lok Sabha win in 2009.

The abysmal show in UP, Goa, and Punjab and no outright win in Uttarakhand is a poor report card in the polls it was expected to sweep.

The assembly polls were tailor-made for Congress to retrieve its bounce after facing the debilitating anti-graft campaigns that have led to policy paralysis at the Centre.

Interestingly, while the UP campaign in-charge Digvijaya Singh expressed surprise, a resounding defeat had looked certain to many in the party since the leaders in the state decided to get adventurous on issues like Batla House ‘encounter’, Muslim quota etc, putting off potential supporters, particularly among the upper caste voters.

The road to 2014 could be risky if Congress is planning to project Rahul Gandhi as its PM candidate. The results suggest a burgeoning indifference or anger against Congress in urban areas which, if part of a pattern, can cost the party dearly in LS polls. After all, the party swept urban India in 2009.