Maharashtra Congress to hold meet, discuss defeat

Smarting after its humiliating reverses in Maharashtra, the Congress will hold a meeting of office bearers and district units this week to introspect on the reasons for its defeat in the Lok Sabha polls.

In Maharashtra, the Congress could get just one candidate, Suresh (Balu) Dhanorkar from Chandrapur, elected to the lower house of the Parliament. Party stalwarts like former chief ministers Ashok Chavan and Sushilkumar Shinde lost from Nanded and Solapur respectively.

On Sunday, a special committee of the state Congress met to discuss the reasons for the party's poll debacle. Sources from the committee, which consists of senior leaders, said they discussed the party's strategy for the state Assembly polls scheduled later this year.

Chavan, who is also the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) president, said they would hold review meetings on June 7 and 8.

"Though there is a tendency to blame Prakash Ambedkar's Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) for our defeat on nine seats, the VBA was not in the fray in other states where Congress was defeated," admitted a senior Congress leader. When contacted, Shinde said this was an "introspection meeting."