After Electoral Defeat, Congress Leaders Seek A Shake-Up In The Party

As the Congress is licking its wounds after the assembly elections, leaders of the grand old party are now speaking out on the party’s functioning.

Congress leaders have moved ahead of its usual rants --- Anoint Rahul Gandhi as the AICC president, Bring Priyanka Gandhi into party politics etc. – and are now seeking a shake-up.

According to a report in The Indian Express, former tribal affairs and panchayati raj minister Kishore Chandra Deo said that AICC vice-president Rahul Gandhi has to get rid of “a dozen people” around him to “survive”. The same report also quotes former law minister Ashwani Kumar saying the party should candidly accept that mistakes have been made and show willingness to atone for them — “wherever the responsibility lies.”

Meanwhile, former Congress MP Priya Dutt in an open criticism of the party said that it suffered from an autoimmune disease. “Cong has shown repeatedly that it suffers from an autoimmune disease Cong destroys Cong we need to be treated from within to be healthy again,” she tweeted.

Cong has shown repeatedly thatit suffers from an autoimmune disease Cong destroys Cong we need to be treated from within to be healthy again

— Priya Dutt (@PriyaDutt_INC) March 15, 2017

"We need to put our heads together and rebuild the party. It's not about one person. This party has not been about one person. It has been about a collective," she also told reporters in Mumbai.

Senior leader and former minister Mani Shankar Aiyar said Jawaharlal Nehru’s assessment of the Congress party in 1936 stands as an accurate description of the party’s condition in 2017.  "We have largely lost touch with the masses; we have dried up and weakened; our organization has shrunk - and so we have lost the power we once had! Even more important than promoting the composite alliance is for the Congress to put its own house in order,” said Aiyar in an article written for NDTV.

Batting for coalition politics rather than Congress fighting it alone, Aiyar said putting "its own house in order" is more important for the party.