The Congress will form a fact-finding committee that will go into the details of the shock loss in Haryana Assembly polls, sources said on Thursday after the party's top brass headed by AICC chief Mallikarjun Kharge held a review meeting to deliberate on the "unexpected" results.
The Congress president, former party chief Rahul Gandhi, AICC general secretary organisation K C Venugopal, AICC senior observers for the polls Ashok Gehlot and Ajay Maken, as well as AICC secretaries for the state, participated in the review meeting at Kharge's 10, Rajaji Marg residence. AICC in-charge of state Deepak Babaria joined the meeting online.
"We held a review meeting on Haryana election results. As you all know, as the exit polls and opinion polls had shown, the results were unexpected. There was a lot of difference between exit polls and actual results. We discussed what could be the reasons for that. We will take appropriate steps going forward on this," Maken told reporters after the meeting.
Asked if infighting had hurt the Congress' chances in the polls, Maken said, "There are various reasons, from the Election Commission to internal differences, we have discussed all that will do so in future as well because such a big upset...we cannot discuss everything in one or one-and-a-half hours."
A source present at the meeting said a fact-finding committee will be announced soon as is the convention in the party to analyse the results. The committee will speak with the party's candidates and leaders and detail the reasons for the "unexpected results".
The committee will also look into the details of complaints from various constituencies and compile them in a comprehensive manner.
Sources said Gandhi, who broke his silence on the results on Wednesday, is keen that an in-depth analysis be done of the "unexpected" results and accountability for the shock loss be fixed.
The meeting comes a day after the Congress demanded a thorough probe into "discrepancies" found in some Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during the counting of votes of the Haryana assembly polls and demanded that such EVMs should be sealed and secured pending the inquiry.
A delegation of top Congress leaders comprising former chief ministers Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Ashok Gehlot and AICC leaders Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh, Ajay Maken and Pawan Khera, besides Haryana Congress chief Udai Bhan, met with top Election Commission officials here on Wednesday.
The delegation had handed over a memorandum to the officials along with specific complaints from various constituencies in Haryana. Senior party leader Abhishek Singhvi joined the meeting online.
The Congress leaders alleged that there are at least 20 such complaints, including seven in writing from as many assembly constituencies, with many referring to EVMs functioning at 99 per cent battery capacity whereas the average EVMs were found to be operating at 60 to 70 per cent battery capacity during the counting.
Infighting, over-reliance on sitting MLAs and rebel trouble, appeared to be some of the contributing factors for the Congress' failure to make a comeback in Haryana after a decade.
The party appeared confident of dislodging the BJP dispensation which was in power for 10 years and facing anti-incumbency. However, the BJP with 48 seats halted the Congress' comeback attempt and also proved several exit polls wrong which had predicted a comfortable win for the grand old party in Haryana. The Congress managed to muster 37 seats in the 90-member assembly.
