5-member fact finding team to study Congress debacle

Bengaluru: Close on the heels of the Congress party initiating a booth-wise analysis of votes nationally to check the polling trend at the grassroot level to get a fix on what went horribly wrong in its  calculations in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections,  the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC)  formed a five-member fact finding team headed by former Council chairman V.R. Sudarshan on Monday.

According to a note released by the KPCC, the fact-finding committee was formed to find the reasons for the party's poor show in both the 2019 parliamentary polls and the 2018 assembly elections.

The committee has former minister Basavaraj Rayareddy as convenor, former ministers – Naseer Ahmed, Veerakumar Patil and former Chamarajanagar MP, Dhruvanarayana as members. The committee members will travel to every district, conduct assembly constituency-wise meetings and contact party leaders from the booth to state level to identify reasons for the party's defeat besides gathering suggestions about  organising the Congress in future. A comprehensive report will be submitted to the KPCC president.

The Congress could win only one of the 21 Lok Sabha seats it contested, the coalition partner JD(S) won one of the seven seats it fought while the BJP bagged 25 seats. The Congress, which was confident of  coming back to power in Karnataka under former CM Siddaramaiah's leadership, managed to win only 77 seats in the 2018 assembly polls, while the BJP emerged as the single largest party with 104 MLAs. The JD(S)  won 37 seats.