Election results 2022: Shashi Tharoor weighed in on the Congress defeat. (File)
Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday said the party could not avoid change if it wanted to revive its fortunes, joining the league of the voices within the party - and outside - who appeared to not buy into the official party line of deflecting blame from its leadership.
"All of us who believe in @INCIndia are hurting from the results of the recent assembly elections. It is time to reaffirm the idea of India that the Congress has stood for and the positive agenda it offers the nation - and to reform our organisational leadership in a manner that will reignite those ideas and inspire the people. One thing is clear - Change is unavoidable if we need to succeed," he wrote on Twitter.
In a follow-up tweet, however, he also targeted the BJP in the Uttar Pradesh.
Before him, Congress leader Jaiveer Shergill had posted, "Loss is a Loss there is no justification to it -let's not sugarcoat it with dialogues like 'vote share', 'lost by small margins' etc etc - Accepting the verdict with humility & Acknowledging failure without any if's & but's is first step to reform."
Former Union Minister Ashwani Kumar, who the quit party he recently for the BJP after 46 years, was more unsparing, called the election results a "moment of reckoning" and said they marked the endgame for the Congress.
The rumblings are likely to add to discordant notes from the group of dissidents dubbed the "G-23" which first wrote an unprecedented letter two years ago to Sonia Gandhi asking for sweeping changes and a "visible and effective leadership".
Since then, various leaders have reminded the Gandhis that nothing has changed on the ground and the Congress down spiral continues.
The Congress scored a humiliating 0/5 in the state elections from Uttar Pradesh to Goa, and lost one of the few states it held in Punjab. Senior leader Rahul Gandhi said the party will learn from these election results.
"Humbly accept the people's verdict. Best wishes to those who have won the mandate. My gratitude to all Congress workers and volunteers for their hard work and dedication. We will learn from this and keep working for the interests of the people of India," he wrote on Twitter.
His sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, tasked four years ago to build up the party in Uttar Pradesh for this assembly election, said the party had been unable to "convert our hard work into votes".
"The vote of the people is paramount in a democracy. Our workers and leaders worked hard, formed the organization, fought on the issues of the people. But, we were not able to convert our hard work into votes," she said in a series of tweets.
Addressing a press conference at the party's headquarters in Delhi, Congress General Secretary and chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala also said even though the Congress was successful in reviving the party, "we could not convert public opinion into seats".