Tough decisions needed to strengthen party: Kharge

New Delhi: As top Congress leaders met on Friday to deliberate on the party's electoral defeats in Maharashtra and Haryana, party chief Mallikarjun Kharge asserted that "tough decisions" will have to be taken to strengthen the organisation from the grassroots, accountability has to be fixed, and leaders must remain united and not speak publicly against each other.

In his address at the Congress Working Committee meeting at the AICC headquarters here, Kharge said he believes that the EVMs have made the electoral process "suspect" and stressed that it is the constitutional responsibility of the Election Commission to ensure free and fair elections in the country.

Kharge also hit out at internal bickering in the party, and asserting that the lack of unity and statements against their own party leaders harms the party a lot. "Unless we fight elections unitedly and stop making statements against each other, how will we be able to defeat our opponents politically?" the Congress president said.

He also called for removing shortcomings in the party by learning lessons from the election results and said the party would have to evolve a strategy to effectively counter the "propaganda and misinformation" by its rivals. "Therefore, it is important that we strictly follow discipline. We have to remain united under all circumstances."

“The party also has the weapon of disciplining. But we do not want to put our workers in any bondage,” he said.

Speaking on the Maharashtra polls, Kharge said the assembly poll results after a good outcome in Lok Sabha elections jolted the party. He said some “tough decisions” will have to be taken due to the “below expectation” performance in state elections. Riding on its performance in the Lok Sabha polls, the Congress went into assembly polls with new enthusiasm, but the election results were not as per the party’s expectations, the Congress chief said.

“After the kind of results that came in favour of MVA in the Lok Sabha just six months ago, the result of the assembly polls is beyond the understanding of even political pundits. The kind of results that have come - no arithmetic can justify them,” he said.