TPCC leaders told to focus on LS elections

Rahul Gandhi hears reasons for loss in Assembly elections at review meeting in New Delhi

Forget the defeat and focus on Parliament elections as we have a serious chance of winning good seats — this was the message from AICC president Rahul Gandhi to the Congress MLAs and senior leaders.

In the first review meeting after the shocking defeat in the Telangana Assembly elections, held at New Delhi on Tuesday, Mr. Gandhi personally heard all the MLAs and MLCs on the reasons for the defeat. The 90-minute long meeting saw the MLAs expressing their views ranging from usage of money, luring the voters with direct transfer of funds, misuse of official machinery and the inability of the party to take the anti-government policies to the people.

The MLAs apparently also said the alliance talks with CPI, TDP and TJS stretched too far delaying in the announcement of candidates and it was also a reason. Some of them favoured alliance but the joint campaign with AP Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu gave scope to TRS president K. Chandrashekar Rao to whip up emotions and instill fear among voters that Telangana will lose out as Naidu will control the administration.

Strategy meeting

The role of Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Kumar and his reluctance to act on complaints on EVMs were also explained by some MLAs. “There were no personal complaints against any leader of the party by any MLA,” said AICC incharge for Telangana R.C. Khuntia. “Mr. Gandhi patiently heard the views of MLAs and asked them to now focus on Parliament elections strategy.”

TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy said Mr. Gandhi will further discuss the strategy in a few days with the team consisting of himself, Mr. Khuntia, CLP leader Bhatti Vikramarka and the three AICC secretaries for Telangana, K. Sreenivasan, Bose Raju and Saleem Ahmed. “A clear strategy will emerge in that meeting,” he said.

The meeting was also attended by TPCC working presidents — A. Revanth Reddy, Ponnam Prabhakar and Kusum Kumar — and the chairpersons of the recently announced committees including Madhu Yaskhi and Vijaya Shanti. Another working president Mohd. Azharuddin did not attend due to his prior commitments.

Alliance to continue

A senior leader revealed that the Congress was in favour of alliance with the Telangana TDP, Telangana Jana Samiti and the Communist Party of India (CPI) but it may not be able to adjust any seats to them given the few seats. Moreover, Congress doesn’t see any strong leader in those parties who can take on the TRS and also raise the finances needed for the Parliament elections.