Congress president Sonia Gandhi has called her party leaders to assess its state poll defeat
Congress chief Sonia Gandhi is meeting top leaders from her party this evening to inquest its humiliating defeat in key state elections. Voters punished the party for corruption and inflation, underlining the struggle for the Congress as it seeks a third straight term victory in the national election due by May.
The main opposition party, the BJP, wrested Delhi and Rajasthan from the Congress, and was re-elected in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. It has credited its prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, with galvanizing support.
Yesterday, for the first time, Mrs Gandhi seemed to acknowledge that her party may need to amend its strategy and announce its presumptive prime minister to avoid being seen as adrift without leadership. "People need not worry. At the opportune time, the name of our PM candidate will be announced, " she said.
Standing next to her was her 43-year-old son, Rahul, who has so far refused the Congress clamour to accept the prime ministerial nomination. Mr Gandhi, who promised a total transformation of the Congress after the results were announced yesterday. Though he was the party's star campaigner, Congress leaders deny that the results reflect his failure to connect with voters.
But a key ally, Sharad Pawar, who heads the Nationalist Congress Party or NCP, offered a damaging assessment. "People need strong, decisive and result-oriented leaders. They do not want weak rulers," the union minister said in his blog.
Nowhere was the Congress crushed more comprehensively than in Delhi, where it was forced from first to third place by the one-year-old Aam Aadmi Party, founded by former tax inspector Arvind Kejriwal.
Veteran politicians have congratulated Mr Kejriwal for the AAP's industrial-strength debut - it won 40% of Delhi's seats. Mr Pawar, however, was vitriolic about the political rookie, referring to it as " a bunch of pseudo activists who has no connect with ground reality."