People don't see Congress as an effective option: Kapil Sibal

The Congress leadership is facing questions once again over poor performance in the recently concluded Bihar assembly elections, where it failed it score a significant number of seats. This time, the questions are coming from inside the party with senior leader Kapil Sibal targeting Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi without naming them.

Sibal has said that people do not see Congress as an effective option.

In an interview with Indian Express, Sibal said, "Not only Bihar, but by the results of the by-elections in various states, it seems that people are not considering Congress as an effective option. RJD is the only option in Bihar. We did not get a single seat in the Gujarat by-election. It was the same situation in the Lok Sabha elections. In the by-elections in Uttar Pradesh, Congress candidates got less than 2 per cent of the votes in some seats, which is definitely a matter of concern."

Earlier, senior Bihar Congress leader Tariq Anwar also said that there should be discussions inside the party on the Bihar election result. He also said that the grand alliance had to bear the brunt of the delay in finalizing the seat-sharing. Congress should learn from this and complete the coalition formalities for the upcoming assembly elections.

In response to a question related to Tariq Anwar, Kapil Sibal said, "If Congress does not introspect in six years, what is the hope now?" We know the weaknesses of the Congress, we know what is the problem as an organization. I think everyone knows the solution too. The Congress party also knows this well, but they do not want to adopt these measures. If they continue to do so, then the graph of performance will keep falling like this.

When asked why the Congress is hesitating in adopting the measures if it is aware of reality, Sibal said that the Congress Working Committee (CWC) is a nominated body. The CWC constitution has to include democratic processes. You cannot expect the nominated members to raise the question as to why Congress is getting weaker election by-election.

It may be recalled that 22 Congress leaders including Kapil Sibal had written a letter to Sonia Gandhi demanding reforms in the party on a large scale. Speaking about this, he said, 'Since then, there has been no discussion in this subject. There is no attempt to communicate from the party leadership. Since there is no forum to express my views, I am forced to do so in public '. Notably, there was a lot of uproar in the CWC meeting regarding this letter.