Cong holds review meet on Haryana poll defeat, to set up fact-finding team

The Congress top brass on Thursday held a review meeting on the party's shock defeat in Haryana Assembly polls and decided to form a fact-finding team that will speak to all its candidates to find out the reasons for the debacle.

Sources said the leaders during the meeting discussed the possible reasons for the "unexpected" results in Haryana and decided to set up the team to ascertain the reasons behind such results and also look into complaints of "discrepancies" in EVMs, as alleged by party candidates.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, former party chief Rahul Gandhi, AICC general secretary organisation KC 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.

AICC in-charge of Haryana Deepak Babaria joined the meeting online.

However, Haryana Congress chief Udai Bhan and CLP leader and former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, or any other senior leaders from the state were not called for the meeting.

"We held a review meeting on Haryana election results. As you all know, as the exit polls and opinion polls had showed, the results were unexpected.

"There was a lot of difference between exit polls and actual results. We discussed that, 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 hour."

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 office of Congress president later issued a statement.

"The party has decided to depute a Technical Team to look into complaints and discrepancies noted by our candidates. Congress party will issue a detailed response based on the fact finding team's report," AICC Secretary, attached to Congress president, Pranav Jha said in the statement.

He said following Congress' meeting on Thursday to discuss the results of Haryana elections, there have been numerous source-based news circulating in media.

"We request you to stick to our formal briefing and desist from any conjectures, that deviate from the official brief," Jha said in his statement also posted on X.

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 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 K C 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 failing 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.