'Why Should I Resign? I Delivered,' Digvijaya Singh After Sabotage Charge

NEW DELHI: After a strong rebuttal to his critics within the party, Congress general secretary in-charge of Goa Digvijaya Singh on Friday told NDTV that there was no reason for him to resign for the party's inability to form the government in Goa when he had delivered on his mandate.

"I have delivered the result...Why should I resign?" Mr Singh told NDTV when asked if he too -like party leaders have been offering to do in other states - would take responsibility for the Congress' failure to get the numbers to form the government in the state under his charge.

The senior Congress leader counted the Aam Aadmi Party's failure to get a single seat and a sharp decline in the BJP's tally from 22 in 2012 elections to 13 seats his achievement. "We are the single largest party," he said.

The Congress won 17 of Goa's 40 assembly seats, just four short of the majority mark. But the BJP, which had just 13 lawmakers moved quickly to tie-up with smaller parties and staked claim to form government, getting an invitation to do so from Governor Mridula Sinha. The Congress says the governor should have first consulted it as the largest party on whether it had the numbers to form government. It has called the invite "a murder of democracy" and threatened to move a motion against the Governor in the Rajya Sabha, where the NDA is in a minority.

Mr Singh made it clear that he wasn't fighting shy of taking responsibility for everything that happened in Goa but this didn't mean he was wrong.

"I take full responsibility but I think I have done the right thing and I stand by it others... I am not quitting," he said.

In a series of tweets earlier in the day, the senior Congress leader had gone public with how the party could have formed the government if his strategy to ally with the Vijay Sardesai-led Goa Forward Party before elections had been implemented. But the move was "sabotaged", he said, a reference that opposition from some state leaders to this tie-up. If he had had his way, Mr Singh suggested, the Congress - and not the BJP - would have formed the government.

Mr Singh had also outlined his success in improving the party's tally, something that he believes sets him apart from other leaders heading states where Congress suffered heavy losses.

Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Raj Babbar had offered to step down after the party's dismal performance in the assembly election; the Congress won just seven of the 105 seats contested in UP. In Odisha, the general secretary in-charge of BK Hariprasad made the offer after the Congress ended up with just 60 of the 850 seats in last month's panchayat polls.