This Article is From Mar 08, 2012

There is sabotage within the party, says UP Congress chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi

Amethi: The comment by Congress MP from Sultanpur, Sanjay Singh, has rattled the party's state leadership. The Congress' chief in Uttar Pradesh has said that the leaders should not indulge in blame game at a time when the party is in crisis after the election results.

Speaking to NDTV, Mrs Joshi said, "It's very wrong for Sanjay Singh to speak out now. The party is in a crisis after results and anyone doing blame game is doing extreme injustice to party."

She also said that local leaders acted very irresponsibly and there is a lot of sabotage within the party. "The candidates have not been connecting with the people, I have full information. We have started collecting records of this and I will meet Sonia Gandhi tomorrow in Delhi," she said.

Sanjay Singh and his wife Ameeta, had earlier told NDTV that there is a lot of infighting within the Congress in Amethi.

"Neither the party, nor the candidates wanted me to campaign. So I didn't go. The candidates thought that me being a member of Parliament won't help, that they themselves were enough," said Mr Singh.

I was asked about the candidates but I knew they won't win in Sultanpur, he added.

When asked whether the magic of the Gandhi factor and other family names may be fading, his wife Ameeta said, ""I believe that coming from the era of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, then Mrs Gandhi, followed by Rajiv Gandhi and then Mrs Sonia Gandhi, and now Rahul Gandhi, times are changing. And if we talk about this legacy, this family then Mulayam Singh also has a legacy. But his daughter-in-law lost the election two years back. And in his own hometown."

Ameeta was the Congress' candidate for the Amethi seat in the UP assembly elections.

The Congress is busy assessing damage from its disastrous showing in what was pegged as a mini-general election. The Congress president made a rare appearance yesterday to explain what went wrong and had all her answers ready. In UP, she said, a weak organisation and a poor choice of candidates had done her party in. Wrong candidates meant more rebels, she said. She also said very candidly, with a laugh, that her party's problem was not a lack of leadership, but that of "too many leaders." Spoiling the broth?

Mrs Gandhi also made it clear that the UPA government that her party leads at the Centre is secure and that there will be no change of Prime Minister till 2014. "The question does not arise," she said, also refusing to answer who the Congress' candidate for PM will be in the next General Elections. "We are in 2012 and 2014 is a long way off," she said.

The Congress could add only six seats to its earlier tally of 22 in UP; it lost a sitter in Punjab; lost Goa comprehensively, and fell short of a majority, though it has now staked claim, in Uttarakhand. Mrs Gandhi pointed out that the party had been re-elected in Manipur.

The Congress chief fielded questions about the party's poor showing in the family bastion of Amethi-Rae Bareli calmly. She admitted that the Congress' choice of candidates was wrong, pointing out that "In Amethi, the newcomer who we fielded won." That was one of only two seats that the Congress could win from the 10 on offer. Her daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had camped in this area for more than a month and campaigned extensively door-to-door. She had also promised her mother publicly that she would deliver all 10 seats.

The mother did not offer extensive explanations for her son Rahul Gandhi's failure to convert his high-profile, high-energy efforts in UP into seats for the party. Stating that she "humbly accepted the people's verdict," Mrs Gandhi said, "In UP the people were unhappy with the BSP and the alternative for them was the Samajwadi Party." With the same candour she accepted, "In Goa, the people were unhappy with us."

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