Already gasping for breath in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress went into coma in the state as it could win just one seat, Rae Bareli, in the Lok Sabha polls.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi lost Amethi, the family bastion. UP Congress president Raj Babbar, who lost from Fatehpur Sikri, has tendered his resignation from the state party chief post.
On the other hand, after the defeat of Congress president Gandhi, party district president of Amethi Yogendra Mishra has sent his resignation letter to the party president on Thursday night.
In the letter, Mishra said that he was taking the moral responsibility for the loss of the party president from Amethi and thus was tendering his resignation from the president of the district committee.
In the 2017 assembly polls in UP, Congress could win just seven seats and in the 2019 general elections, it won only UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s traditional seat of Rae Bareli, setting danger bells ringing for the party.
The party has garnered a vote percentage of 6.3 per cent in the election in UP this time. This could be Congress’ worst electoral performance in UP since 1977 general election after the Emergency.
That time, the Congress had lost all the 85 Lok Sabha seats in UP, including that of then prime minister Indira Gandhi (Rae Bareli) and her son Sanjay Gandhi (Amethi).
What is shocking is that the newly-appointed Congress general secretary in-charge UP (East), Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who was expected to better the party’s prospects, also failed to deliver.
Despite her extensive campaigning in Amethi, she failed to arrest the slide in Congress pocket borough Amethi.
While Gandhi lost in Amethi, the victory margin of Sonia was also dwindling in Rae Bareli.
Besides the Gandhis, no former minister of the UPA regime from UP could perform up to the expectations and came a poor third at most places.
Along with Gandhi, only two Congress candidates were in the second spot– Raj Babbar from Fatehpur Sikri and Sriprakash Jaiswal from Kanpur.
A senior Congress leader told UNI in New Delhi on Friday that the party leadership should introspect about what went wrong in their campaigning and why the issues raised by the party were not at all accepted by the voters.
“There are just around 3 years left for the 2022 assembly polls in the state and if the party leaders start their work from now on, then only the party can be revived,” he said.
