New Delhi: Congress, which has blamed EVMs for its Haryana debacle, has decided to pause its attack against the poll body and instead focus inwards to look into the role of factional feuds and weaknesses that prevented a win. The party top brass Thursday decided to form a fact-finding team that will speak to all its candidates to find out the reasons for the debacle.
The review meeting chaired by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge was attended by former party chief Rahul Gandhi, AICC general secretary organisation KC Venugopal, AICC senior observers for the polls Ashok Gehlot and Ajay Maken, as well as AICC secretaries for the state.
AICC in-charge of Haryana Deepak Babaria joined the meeting online.
However, Haryana Congress chief Udai Bhan and CLP leader and former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, or any other senior leaders from the state were not called for the meeting.
"We held a review meeting on Haryana election results. As you all know, as the exit polls and opinion polls had showed, the results were unexpected. There was a lot of difference between exit polls and actual results. We discussed that, what could be the reasons for that. We will take appropriate steps going forward on this," Ajay Maken told reporters after the meeting.
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Asked if infighting hurt the Congress' chances in the polls, Maken said, "There are various reasons, from the Election Commission to internal differences, we have discussed all that will do so in future as well because such a big upset…we cannot discuss everything in one or one-and-a-half hour."
The fact-finding committee – set to be announced soon – will speak with the party's candidates and leaders and detail the reasons for the "unexpected results", news agency PTI reported.
"The party has decided to depute a Technical Team to look into complaints and discrepancies noted by our candidates. Congress party will issue a detailed response based on the fact finding team's report," AICC Secretary, attached to Congress president, Pranav Jha said in the statement.
The Congress has alleged that there were "discrepancies" in some Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during the counting of votes of the Haryana polls. The party has demanded that such EVMs should be sealed and secured pending the inquiry.
A delegation of top Congress leaders comprising former chief ministers Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Ashok Gehlot and AICC leaders K C Venugopal met with top Election Commission officials on Wednesday and handed them a memorandum along with specific complaints from various constituencies in Haryana.
The Congress leaders alleged that there are at least 20 such complaints, including seven in writing from as many assembly constituencies, with many referring to EVMs functioning at 99 per cent battery capacity whereas the average EVMs were found to be operating at 60 to 70 per cent battery capacity during the counting.
Infighting, over reliance on sitting MLAs and rebel trouble appeared to be some of the contributing factors for the Congress failing to make a comeback in Haryana after a decade.
The party had taken an early lead in the early hours of counting Tuesday. Later the BJP clawed back to the top and managed 48 seats despite facing anti-incumbency after 10 years in power, halting Congress' comeback attempt and also proving several exit polls wrong which had predicted a comfortable win for the grand old party in Haryana. The Congress managed 37 seats in the 90-member assembly.
With inputs from PTI