With Parliament in recess, the Congress leadership is finally paying attention to the party's organisational problems — stretching from Uttar Pradesh, where it performed dismally in the recent Assembly elections, to Andhra Pradesh, where despite being in power, it lost a string of Assembly elections last month.
While general secretary Rahul Gandhi has called a meeting on U.P. for April 6, party president Sonia Gandhi is now focussing on the mess in Andhra Pradesh.
Having waited exactly a month for the U.P. results to sink in, Mr. Gandhi plans to review the dismal performance with party leaders at Friday's meeting, ahead of working on a strategy for the next challenge in the State — the 2014 general elections. Newly elected MLAs and MPs from the State would also attend the meeting.
On April 5, Mr. Gandhi will meet candidates who lost in the Assembly polls despite polling 20,000 votes or more, as well as those who were defeated in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections even though they had secured over one lakh votes, to try and understand the ground realities in the State.
In the recently concluded elections, though expectations in the party dipped by the end of campaigning itself, the Congress had not bargained for its tally increasing by a mere six seats — from 22 in 2007 to 28.
Party sources told The Hindu that after the process of appointing block presidents and district presidents was completed by April 16, the Congress would begin the tricky process of selecting Pradesh Congress Committee presidents for U.P., Punjab, Goa — in all of which it failed to perform well in the recent Assembly elections — as well as Haryana, where it is in power, and Bihar, where it is in a very poor shape.
Meanwhile on Wednesday, Ms. Gandhi is likely to meet Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy and PCC president Botsa Satyanarayana, both of whom have been summoned to the capital. The party is wracked by internecine strife in the State, thanks not just to the continuing demand for carving out a Telengana State and the Jagan Reddy factor but also to the war between the Chief Minister and the PCC chief, which has intensified following the Anti-Corruption Bureau's crackdown on the liquor mafia with Mr. Satyanarayana castigating Mr. Kiran Kumar Reddy for targeting him.
The high command will have to broker a peace between the two men, not just for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls but because the party is shortly facing crucial by-elections in one Lok Sabha constituency and for 18 Assembly seats.
