Senior Leaders Stay Away As Jyotiraditya Scindia Calls Review Meet To Discuss Poll Rout In Uttar Pradesh

Congress general secretary Jyotiraditya Scindia met the party’s state leaders to assess what went wrong in the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh where the party failed miserably.

Scindia, who was made in-charge of the western UP, and given the responsibility of 38 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state, failed to ensure a single victory.

A Congress leader who attended the meeting said he spoke to the district and city unit chiefs of the organisation to find out the possible causes behind the rout.

Two days back, party’s general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, entrusted with the task of managing polls in the remaining 42 seats in the eastern UP, carried out a similar exercise in Rae Bareli, which was the only seat won by the party this time from the state.

UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi was re-elected from Rae Bareli, while Congress president Rahul Gandhi, her son, lost his Amethi seat to Union Minister Smriti Irani.

Priyanka Gandhi has asked senior UP Congress leaders to attend a brain-storming session in Delhi over the weekend to chart out the strategy to contest the 2022 UP assembly polls with full vigour.

Ashok Singh, who was trying to get a party ticket from Etawah Lok Sabha seat and was present in the meeting, told PTI, “At the meeting, I conveyed that the party must end experimentation of all kind.”

“It should repose its faith in workers and cadre, and should not rely on alliances with other parties,” he claimed to have told the meeting chaired by Scindia.

Senior party leaders and former Union ministers Jitin Prasada, Sriprakash Jaiswal, RPN Singh and Salman Khurshid, however, were conspicuous by their absence at the meeting chaired by Scindia.