New Delhi: A day after the party’s rout in the Delhi polls, the knives are out in the Congress with leaders blaming each other and raising questions on whether the grand old party has outsourced the task of defeating the BJP to others.
The party has, however, disapproved of the blame game and asked its leaders to introspect, instead of going public against each other.
The rebuff came after Delhi Mahila Congress chief Sharmishtha Mukherjee publicly asked party veteran P Chidambaram if the state Congress units should shut shop in case the party had decided that others would take on the BJP across states.
It also came after AICC Delhi in-charge PC Chacko sought to put the blame for the party’s decline in the national capital on late chief minister Sheila Dikshit. He said that the Congress started losing ground in 2013. Dikshit was the Delhi chief minister at the time.
“The party’s downfall started since 2013. It lost all the elections thereafter and the new outfit, AAP, took away the Congress vote bank,” Chacko said, without naming Dikshit.
With party colleague Milind Deora slamming him for his comments, Chacko said he had not named Dikshit and his remarks were wrongly being interpreted to run a campaign against him.
“I did not name Sheilaji, who ensured good governance and an all-round development of Delhi during the 15-year Congress rule,” he said later in the day.
Chacko’s resignation was promptly accepted by Congress chief Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday, signalling her disapproval of his comments.
Meanwhile, Mukherjee took on Chidambaram, who had welcomed the AAP’s poll triumph in Delhi as a ‘defeat of bluff and bluster’.
“With due respect sir, just want to know – has Congress outsourced the task of defeating BJP to state parties? If not, then why r we gloating over AAP victory rather than being concerned abt our drubbing? And if ‘yes’, then we (PCCs) might as well close shop (sic)!” Mukherjee said in a tweet. Responding to her, Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC) working chief Devender Yadav said, “It’s really a matter of concern.”
Mukherjee is the daughter of former president Pranab Mukherjee, who has been a Congressman all his life.
Congress’s chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said however slammed the leaders for indulging in the blame game.
“We want to categorically state that the Congress party strongly disapproves of the blame game, the allegations and counter-allegations being hurled upon each other by the Delhi leaders,” Surjewala stated.
“It would have been better if Congress leaders in Delhi and elsewhere would have looked at, introspected upon their own roles, responsibilities, commitment to the party and defined their own duties towards the campaign in Delhi. Then things would have sorted out themselves,” added Surjewala.
The Congress drew a blank for the second consecutive time in the Delhi Assembly polls and its vote share plummeted to 4.26 per cent from 9.7 per cent in 2015.
PTI
