Congress must take back vote share from AAP, says P.C. Chacko

The Congress performed poorly in the civic polls.

We didn’t do so badly. We got a vote share of 21%, up from 9% in the 2015 Assembly elections. But, yes, our expectations were very high.

Does the Congress need a different strategy to take on the BJP?

No one is giving us credit for the way we swept the Gujarat panchayat polls. We won the Punjab Assembly elections too.

Did the U.P. poll results help the BJP win Delhi?

The BJP didn’t fight on civic issues. The Modi factor made it into a general election. The BJP was a miserable failure in the three corporations it controlled all these years.

There were complaints against Ajay Maken about poor selection of candidates.

That’s absolutely wrong. Nominees of all senior leaders like Sheila Dikshit, Sandeep Dikshit, J. P. Aggarwal and Arvinder Lovely (who joined the BJP) were accommodated.

Sheila Dikshit said she wasn’t asked to campaign.

We asked her, but she said, “I’ll come if the candidate wants me”.

You and Mr. Maken have resigned today

We were given a free hand by Congress, so it’s our responsibility.We’ll have to push back to recover our vote share that has gone to the AAP. We need one more election.