Congress Chintan Shivir failed to achieve anything meaningful, says Prashant Kishor

The Congress’ three-day Chintan Shivir, or introspection meeting, held last week has failed to achieve meaningful results, political strategist Prashant Kishor said on Friday.

“I’ve been repeatedly asked to comment on the outcome of the Udaipur Chintan Shivir,” he wrote on Twitter. “In my view, it failed to achieve anything meaningful other than prolonging the status-quo and giving some time to the Congress leadership, at least till the impending electoral rout in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.”

A three-day meeting was held in Rajasthan’s Udaipur from May 13 to May 15 as part of Congress’ preparation for the next round of Assembly and the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

The meeting was held came in the backdrop of the party’s dismal performance in the 2022 Assembly polls in five states – Goa, Manipur, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. It lost Punjab to the Aam Aadmi Party and failed to wrest power from the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur.

The Congress has also been facing resistance from members of the Group of 23, or G-23, which comprises Congress leaders who have been seeking an organisational overhaul in the party since 2020.

Days before the Chintan Shivir, Congress President Sonia Gandhi had said that the party needs self-criticism but not in a manner that erodes morale and creates an atmosphere of “gloom and doom”.

Recently, Kishor declined to join Congress as a member of its Empowered Action Group 2024. The group is meant to address the political challenges for the party ahead of the 2024 General Assembly elections.

While declining the offer to join the Congress, Kishor had said that the party needed leadership and a collective will to fix its “deep-rooted structural problems” through reforms.

Kishor shot to fame after running a successful campaign for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and has had stints with many political parties since then.