The Congress party’s top leadership, headed by its chief Mallikarjun Kharge on Thursday held a review meeting to deliberate on the what the party calls ‘unexpected’ results in Haryana assembly elections.
The Congress party won 37 of the 90 seats in the polls, the result of which was declared on October 8. Defying exit polls and beating anti-incumbency of ten years, however, the Bharatiya Janata Party won 48 seats and is set to form government for the record third straight time in Haryana.
At the Thursday meeting, Rahul Gandhi remained quiet for most of the time, according to reports, quoting sources. He spoke on Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) issue and also said that the election could have been won, had the local leaders not been more interested in their own progress than that of the party.
Gandhi got miffed when most kept blaming the EVMs, according to a report in News18. He said he wanted the details and walked away, the report said.
Review Meeting
Apart from Gandhi and Kharge, 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.