All Congress MPs skip review panel meet to study LS debacle

New Delhi: None of the Congress' seven Lok Sabha election candidates from the national capital attended the Saturday meeting of a party committee on examining the poll debacle in Delhi. The meeting of the Delhi Congress' probe committee was attended by some leaders, including two district presidents of the New Delhi parliamentary constituency, but no MP candidate from the party was available as many of them are out of the city, committee member Yoganand Shastri said.

The panel, which was formed by the party's Delhi president Sheila Dikshit on last Monday to look into the reasons behind its poor performance in the general election, had met last week. The five-member committee will submit its report to the Dikshit in 10 days.

Besides Dikshit, who contested from North East Delhi, Rajesh Lilothia and Vijender Singh, Congress candidates from North West Delhi and South Delhi, respectively, have appeared before the committee so far. All the seven Congress candidates, including Dikshit lost the Lok Sabha polls, with huge margins to their BJP rivals.

"The party leaders and workers have expressed the view that the Congress can spring up a surprise in the assembly pols in Delhi, provided everyone unites to face the challenge," Shastri said. A senior Delhi Congress leader said the party should declare its candidates for the Delhi assembly elections at least two months in advance so that they have enough time to reach out to the voters.

"In the Lok Sabha polls, the candidates got hardly 15-20 days to campaign which was not enough time to reach out to the vast number of voters spread across large geographical areas of the parliamentary seats in Delhi," he said.

The candidates of Congress on seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi were announced when nominations for the polls begun. There was a lot of confusion over party's alliance with the AAP, which finally did not materialise, the leader said.

A section of Congress leaders, who have questioned the authority of the probe committee have avoided appearing before it. The group of such leaders maintained that no such committee can be formed without the consent of the All India Congress Committee in-charge of Delhi unit PC Chacko. He has denied having any information about the committee, they claimed. They alleged that the role of some of the committee members was questionable during the Lok Sabha polls.

A saving grace for the Congress was that it pushed the AAP by emerging as a runner up on five of the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi. The voting percentage of the Congress was also more than that of the AAP.