As the Congress and its chief Rahul Gandhi take their time to carry out an “overhaul” of the organisation after the debacle in the Lok Sabha election, cracks within the party have begun to surface.
On Tuesday, former Leader of the Opposition in the Maharashtra Assembly and party veteran Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil resigned from the Congress amid rumours that he could be following his son, Sujay Vikhe Patil, to the BJP.
The Congress in Rajasthan is in a churn after Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, in a TV interview, reportedly asked his deputy, Sachin Pilot, to shoulder responsibility for the party’s defeat in Jodhpur.
In an interview telecast by the ABP news channel on Monday, Mr. Gehlot said that Rajasthan Congress chief Sachin Pilot was quite confident that Vaibhav Gehlot would win the seat.
“So, I think he should take responsibility for at least this seat and there should be a post-mortem on why we lost Jodhpur,” Mr. Gehlot said. “A wrong impression is created in the media that the Pradesh Congress Committee and Chief Minister don’t get along.”
The Congress, however, downplayed the episode and blamed the media for ‘distorting’ the interview. “Mr. Ashok Gehlot has clearly said he takes collective responsibility for the defeat, that is both for the party and government,” Congress’s communications chief Randeep Surjewala said.
“It seems a section of the media has become blind followers who can’t do anything other than praise the BJP and criticise the Congress,” he added.
‘Out of context’
Mr. Gehlot tweeted to say the comment had been taken out of context.
“This was in reply to some questions during the interview... some sections of the media are taking it out context,” he tweeted, along with a video of the interview.
On May 25, during a meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), Mr. Gandhi is reported to have blamed the Rajasthan Chief Minister for putting “personal interests above party”, and charged him with focussing only on his son’s seat.
However, party officials close to Mr. Gehlot, who had spoken on condition of anonymity, denied these charges, saying the Chief Minister had campaigned across the State for 26 days.
With the Congress losing all the State’s 25 Lok Sabha seats despite winning the Assembly polls just five months earlier, the ruling party in Rajasthan has witnessed outbursts by several senior Congress leaders in the State.
State Cabinet Minister Lalchand Kataria had posted a resignation letter on social media, which had been turned down by the Chief Minister last Saturday. Tourism Minister Vishwendra Singh took to Twitter to lash out at the police and the administration, while Dausa MLA Ramesh Meena blamed the bureaucracy for preventing elected representatives from working.
In Haryana, a news report talking about a possible change of guard in the party’s State leadership saw supporters of Haryana Congress chief Ashok Tanwar taking to Twitter to blame senior Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda for the debacle.
