Cong forms 5-member team to evaluate electoral fiasco

NEW DELHI, May 11: Just a day after announcing to “fix” responsibilities for electoral debacle in the recently concluded Assembly elections, Congress president Sonia Gandhi has now constituted a five-member team, which includes Shillong MP Vincent H Pala, to evaluate the party performance.
Sonia, in the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting on Monday, had said that the party needed to candidly understand why it failed to dislodge the incumbent governments in Kerala and Assam, and why it drew a complete blank in West Bengal.
The other members of the team are Ashok Chavan (Chairman), Salman Khurshid, Manish Tewari and Jothi Mani.
While Chavan is the former Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Khurshid, Tewari and Pala are all former union ministers.
Taking the cue from normally calm Sonia’s outburst, the CWC had also decided to appoint a fact-finding committee to evaluate the election results and the reasons for the setbacks that the party suffered in four states that went to polls.
Sources from the Congress said that the party will fix responsibility for the debacle based on the report of the fact-finding team and put its house in order.
The All India Congress Committee general secretary, KC Venugopal, informed that the group will submit its report within two weeks.