Congress reviews Haryana loss, to pause EVM attack until there is ‘enough evidence’ | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: The Congress, which responded to the Haryana debacle by blaming the EVMs and dismissing the outcome as “unacceptable”, has decided to pause the line of attack and has shifted focus inward to look at its role of factional feuds and weaknesses that prevented a victory.
The decision was taken at a review meeting convened by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Thursday, with the party chief agreeing that it will firm up its stand on EVMs as one of the major causes of the election loss only after collecting ‘hard evidence’. of misconduct, sources said.
A statement issued by Kharge’s office later in the evening said the party has decided to depute a technical team to look into the complaints and discrepancies noted by candidates. “Congress will provide a detailed response based on the research team’s report on the counting process and operation of electronic voting machines,” the report said.
To ‘avoid bad optics’, Hooda and Selja have not been invited to a conference meeting
At the deliberations, held against the backdrop of supporters of factions led by former Haryana CM BS Hooda and former Union Minister Kumari Selja pointing fingers at each other, Rahul Gandhi stressed that everyone should bury their differences and unite for the interests of the party. “The interests of the party come first,” a source quoted him as saying at the meeting. The struggle between rival factions is widely seen as the key factor in Congress’s defeat.
Hooda, his loyalist and PCC chief Udai Bhan, Selja and her ally Randeep Singh Surjewala were not invited to the meeting, with sources attributing their exclusion to a concern to “avoid bad optics”. The party plans to conduct a booth-level assessment by seeking a report from each candidate to study the factors that played a role in the loss.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Ajay Maken said: “As you all know, the results were unexpected as the exit polls and opinion polls had shown. There was a lot of difference between the exit polls and the actual results. We discussed what the reasons could be.” On whether infighting had hurt Congress’s chances in the polls, Maken said, “There are several reasons, from EC to internal differences. We discussed all that and will have more discussions in the future.”
On Tuesday, party general secretary Jairam Ramesh and spokesperson Pawan Khera had blamed the “slow counting of EVMs” for the party’s defeat to the BJP: a bitter surprise that has helped the saffron rival gain momentum and raised doubts over the viability of the Congress planks – guaranteed MSP purchase of entire agricultural produce, scrapping of Agnipath scheme, caste census and a “compromised Constitution”.
The rejection of the outcome, a first for a national party, provoked strong protests from the EC, which rejected all allegations and raised eyebrows in independent circles. BJP, of course, lashed out at Congress.
Besides Kharge and Rahul, general secretary KC Venugopal, senior poll observers Ashok Gehlot and Maken, as well as state secretaries participated in the review meeting. The state party Deepak Babaria participated in the meeting online from Ahmedabad.