Anand Sharma

NEW DELHI: Amid continuing uncertainty over Congress’s leadership, senior party leader Anand Sharma on Thursday attributed its poor showing in the Lok Sabha polls to “mistakes” in the Congress poll manifesto, like the promise to repeal the sedition law and substantially alter the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act.

Referring specifically to the Congress manifesto, which had also spoken of reducing deployment of the Army in Kashmir , he said the party was not able to balance the narrative in the face “hyper-nationalism” that BJP used to its advantage after the Pulwama attacks and Balakot air strikes in Pakistan. This, Sharma said, put together with its manifesto references, were “distorted and misrepresented to the hilt” by BJP.

“Yes, there is a crisis (in the party) because we were not expecting such a big defeat… This marked uncertainty is not good for the party and we must honestly move forward,” Sharma told HTN Tiranga TV.

Though Sharma blames BJP for “distorting” the Congress manifesto, its “activist” flavour had raised apprehensions within the party that the formulations would render the party vulnerable to attacks from the saffron quarter. “The very mention of three things, the repeal of sedition law, or of AFSPA, that was distorted to the hilt and misrepresented... I can’t blame, this was a bitterly fought election and they (BJP) did it,” he said in the interview.

The Congress manifesto had invited a sharp attack from BJP, which said the document had some “very dangerous” ideas and used its contents to argue that the main opposition had aligned itself with the “tukde-tukde gang” of left-oriented political activists who organised a commemoration of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru (hanged in 2013) in Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2016.

Sharma also said there were structural weaknesses in the organisation that hurt the party. “We have not been able to streamline decision-making on organisational structures,” he said, adding that there were many states where the party has been weakened and this needed urgent attention.

The senior leader, who was in charge of Congress’s campaign committee, also said NYAY, the party’s key poll promise for farmers, failed to yield the desired results as it was unveiled only in April — too close to the polls instead of at least six months earlier. It failed to match the government’s PM Kisan scheme, which had already delivered cash to people, as opposed to Congress’s promise of Rs 72,000 in bank accounts if elected to power.

Sharma conceded that Congress was gripped by a marked uncertainty in the aftermath of its 55-seat performance, but insisted that it will engage in “honest introspection and course correction” and that it will not “just fade away” even as he admitted that the party was in the grip of a crisis.

The Congress deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha also accepted that Congress was not able to match BJP in its organisational strength and that it failed to streamline its district, mandal and booth-level committees, many of which were not in place in time for the LS polls.

