Congress MP Karti Chidambaram on Monday tweeted that it was time for the party to “introspect, ideate, consult and act” following its poor performance in the Bihar General Assembly elections.
In his tweet, Karti Chidambaram, the son of former Union minister P Chidambaram, tagged a tweet by senior party leader Kapil Sibal on his interview to an English newspaper about the Bihar results.
Sibal had said in the interview that the Congress had not taken any effort to analyse the defeat. “We are yet to hear from the Congress party their views on our recent performance in Bihar and in the bye-elections,” he said. “Maybe they think all is well and that it should be business as usual.”
Various leaders in the party have been demanding a change in the organisation. At least 23 party leaders, including Sibal, Shashi Tharoor, Prithviraj Chavan and Milind Deora, had in August written to party president Sonia Gandhi, asking for a complete transformation of the organisation.
“Even after 14 months of the 2019 electoral verdict, the Congress Party has not undertaken any honest introspection to analyse the reasons for its continued decline,” the letter had said. “In order to stem the decline, we have taken upon ourselves to be open and frank so that the Congress Party’s future, which presently is at stake, is not jeopardized any further.”
It said the party should have a full-time and active leadership that is visible, as well as available at the All India Congress Committee headquarters. The letter added that elections of Congress Working Committee members, AICC members and block and state Congress chiefs should be held in a transparent manner. Party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad had earlier called for internal elections and said that a president appointed without one may not even have 1% support of the leaders.
Besides Azad, Tharoor had also called for holding elections to appoint the party chief. He had, however, maintained that the elections should be held if Rahul Gandhi does not wish to take over as the party president. “A participatory democratic process would significantly add to the incoming leadership’s credibility and legitimacy which, in turn, would be vital assets as they set about the significant organisational challenges associated with re-energising the Congress,” he had said.
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