Two days ago, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra presented a report on the party's rout in five states.
Congress's Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is holding a meeting to review the party's decimation in the politically crucial Uttar Pradesh. The 50-year-old was put in charge of Uttar Pradesh soon after she joined politics and tasked with building the party from ground up. Four years down the line, despite her high voltage "Ladki hoon lad sakti hoon" (I am a girl and can fight) campaign, the party managed to get only two seats in the state, down from seven in 2017. Its vote share has shrunk to just 2.5 per cent.
The Congress general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh is at the party's war room at Delhi's Gurdwara Rakabganj Road. She is chairing a meeting, which is being attended by the top state leaders of the party.
The meeting comes two days after Ms Gandhi Vadra presented her report on the rout in the five states where elections were held at a meeting of the Working Committee, the party's top decision-making body.
At the meeting, her mother and the party's interim chief Sonia Gandhi had offered to resign in view of the crushing defeat. The offer was not accepted and it was decided to prepare for the party's internal elections after the ongoing budget session of parliament.
The Congress has not ruled Uttar Pradesh since 1989 and over the years, it has been consistently losing ground in the state. In the 2019 general elections, Rahul Gandhi had lost the family bastion of Amethi to the BJP's Smriti Irani.
Amethi was one of the last two strongholds of the Congress, the other being Sonia Gandhi's Raebareli. The party has not managed to win a single seat under the 10-odd assembly constituencies under these two seats.
This time, after the disastrous results of their tie-up with Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party, the Congress had to go it alone in the elections. The party ended up losing five of the seven seats it held.
In the run up to the elections, the party also lost key leaders to the BJP – the list included Jitin Prasada, RPN Singh, state leaders Shailendra Dixit and Rakesh Sachan and sitting MLA Naresh Saini.