Rahul Gandhi’s 'advisers' face heat as Congress searches for answers

New Delhi: As Congress searches for answers for its worst-ever electoral performance, daggers are already out in the party ahead of the crucial Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting scheduled on Monday.

Senior party leaders speaking in private are severely critical of some key advisers of Rahul Gandhi, while some have chosen to go public finding fault with the ticket distribution.

Those who are in the firing line of a section of leaders include Jairam Ramesh, Mohan Gopal, Madhusudan Mistry, Mohan Prakash and Ajay Maken.

There was also media speculation that Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi could offer to resign during the CWC meet, which has been called to take stock of the political situation in the aftermath of results.

However, top sources in the party trashed such speculation. "It is all rubbish. This is not the way to go forward. That is not the solution," the sources close to the top leadership said.

The meeting of the CWC, the party's apex decision making body has been convened on May 19 even as questions were being raised over the leadership of Rahul Gandhi as well as the over-all election strategy of the party, besides the performance of the UPA-II government led by Manmohan Singh.

Accepting responsibility for the poll debacle, Sonia and Rahul have conceded that the mandate in the Lok Sabha polls was "clearly against" Congress and said there was "lot for us to think about".

Talking to PTI, Special Invitee to the CWC Anil Shastri ruled out that some of the Congress candidates left the party after  they were given tickets, which calls for a serious look at the way tickets were given.

He said that Rahul Gandhi had earlier said that party hoppers won't be given tickets on a platter after joining Congress but this was done in a number of cases and hence those who did it, in defiance of the Congress vice president's view, should face the music.

As several Union Cabinet ministers lost in their respective seats miserably, a senior party leader said that there was a total disconnect of the ministers with party workers.

Amid murmurs in the party against Rahul's functioning, the leader dismissed suggestions about the "waning" impact of the Gandhi family and said,"we have seen how Congress fared without the family".

The Lok Sabha results, like the Delhi Assembly poll results, have sent shock waves in the party. There is a a view that Congress has paid the price for not having strong regional leaders.

Citing an instance, a senior leader said that former Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh showed his mettle in Amritsar by handing out a convincing defeat to BJP leader Arun Jaitley.

A general view in the Congress is that the issue of price rise and corruption went against the party and the situation was exploited to the hilt by Narendra Modi by tapping the anti-incumbency sentiment.

Downplaying suggestions that the party's unprecedented poor show put question marks on the leadership of Rahul Gandhi, Union minister Jairam Ramesh and senior party leader Satyavrat Chaturvedi have maintained that it was a collective responsibility.

"The scale of our defeat has been staggering, most unexpected. We really have to understand why this happened to what extend is this Modi wave--to what extent is this anti-incumbency wave. These are all factors that we will have to understand," Ramesh said yesterday.

Shastri said he will be writing a letter to Rahul Gandhi in a couple of days listing the reasons, which according to him led to this kind of defeat for Congress.