Rahul Gandhi begins exercise to analyse UP poll outcome

With the Congress debacle in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls coming as a jolt, Rahul Gandhi on Thursday began the task of analysing the outcome to make the party battle-ready ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2014. 

Gandhi, who led the party in the crucial polls, held parleys with party candidates who lost despite securing more than 20,000 votes, party sources said.

The two-day exercise, which was earlier scheduled to take place last week, has been launched as part of a move to set the house in order with UP having a crucial role for the party.

Newly elected party MLAs as also MPs from the state have been called on Friday for the much-talked about meeting, the first formal review of the UP polls by Gandhi, who has owned up responsibility for the defeat.

Gandhi had himself led the campaign in UP after being instrumental in securing 22 of the 80 seats in the Lok Sabha polls in the state in 2009 which was seen as a revival of the organisation.

AICC General Secretary Digvijay Singh, who has been abroad, was not present at the meeting despite being in-charge of the party affairs in the state.

Senior leader Mohan Prakash, who had overseen the ticket distribution work in the polls, was also absent.

The exercise could be utilised by some leaders to blame their detractors for the poor show.

The talk in the party is that some Union Ministers from the state may face flak at the meeting for their controversial statements as also moves to corner tickets for their loyalists.

Congress secured just 28 of the 403 seats in the polls, six more than it had bagged in the Assembly polls of 2007.

UP Assembly legislators to take oath on April 11

The newly-elected members of Uttar Pradesh Assembly will take oath on April 11-12, while the Speaker would be elected on 13^th April, official sources said in Lucknow on Thursday.

Congress and SP MLAs Pramod Tiwari and Mitrasen Yadav respectively will administer oath to the legislators in the House. The date for the session of the Assembly will be decided later.

Problems confronting party in states would soon be over

Amid growing unease in the party in several states, including Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, Congress has indicated that the problems confronting the organisation would be sorted out soon.

The remarks by party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi that the issues being raised in various states would be satisfactorily sorted out in the near future came on the eve of Rahul Gandhi embarking on the exericse of analysing the poll outcome in Uttar Pradesh.

Gandhi will be meeting party leaders from UP in the next two to three days in a move to set right the organization ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

The exercise has been undertaken in the backdrop of the debacle in recent Assembly polls in three of the five states as the party struggles to set its house in order there.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy and state Congress president Botsa Satyanarayana, with their guns trained at each other, held parleys with AICC General Secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad on Wednesday.

A desperate party high command is seeking to broker peace between them ahead of the crucial by-elections to one Lok Sabha and 18 Assembly seats in the state and to bring a semblance of an order in the state unit.

"You will see in the near future everything will be satisfactorily sorted out", Singhvi told reporters at the AICC briefing on Wednesday to questions that there are several states in the country where the Congress party is rudderless and the turmoil is growing within the ranks.

Singhvi downplayed the issue of around three dozen MLAs from Rajasthan Assembly camping in Delhi and criticizing the working style of Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot saying everyone in the party was entitled to put forward his views.