Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal bashes Congress leadership after the Bihar Assembly Elections.
He feels that Congress is in a sorry state of affairs.
The Congress leader said that the party leadership was not addressing the problems besetting it. “Some of us put our pen to paper and said what should be done in the Congress on the road ahead,” he said. “Instead of listening to us, they turned their back on us. The results are for all to see.”
“We lost all the by-elections in Gujarat. Even in the Lok Sabha elections we had not won a single seat there,” Sibal said and added that three candidates in Gujarat even lost their deposits. “So the writing is on the wall,” he said.
Kapil Sibal is one of the 23 Congress leaders who appealed to Sonia Gandhi in August this year. In their appeal the spoke to Sonia Gandhi to make sweeping changes in the party and for democratic overhaul of the party to counter the BJP’s preeminence over India’s polity.
The letter was perceived to call out to Sonia Gandhi’s authority as a party leader.
The letter also referred to the “steady decline of the party” and called for collective leadership.
Talking about the letter, Sibal said that the Congress leadership had made “no effort” to initiate an intra party dialogue. “Since there is no forum to express my views, I am constrained to express them publicly,” he said. “I am a Congressman and will remain a Congressman and hope and pray that Congress provides the alternative to a power structure which has subverted all the values that the nation stands for.”
Sibal also said that not even one of his concerns were addressed in the recent meetings.
Sibal further noted in the interview that the time for “introspection” was over. “If for six years the Congress has not introspected, what hope do we have for introspection now? We know what is wrong with the Congress,” he said.
The party was not willing to recognise what was wrong organisationally, he said. “Organisationally, we know what is wrong. We have all the answers. The Congress itself knows all the answers. But they are not willing to recognise those answers… then the graph will continue to decline… The Congress must be brave and willing to recognise them.”
He also added that,“Democratic processes must be adopted and embraced, even in the constitution of the CWC, which is reflected in the provisions of the Congress constitution. You don’t expect nominated members to start questioning,” he said.
On whether the party had considered its poor performance in Bihar as “business as usual,” Sibal said that he had not heard from the party’s leadership. “I only hear voices which surround the leadership. That is all I know. We are yet to hear from the Congress party their views on our recent performance in Bihar and in the by-elections,” he said.
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The Congress had contested 70 constituencies in the state as a part of the Rashtriya Janata Dal-led Mahagathbandhan and the won only 19 seats.