Odisha Congress leaders summoned to Delhi

BHUBANESWAR: The AICC has summoned OPCC president Jayadev Jena and 15 other leaders to New Delhi to explain the party's drubbing in the recent Lok Sabha and assembly elections in the state.
The leaders are scheduled to appear before a committee headed by A K Antony on Sunday and place their views.
Other members in the Congress contingent include former minister and head of campaign committee Srikanta Jena, former PCC president Niranjan Patnaik and Sarat Patnaik, AICC office-bearers from the state K C Lenka, Bhakta Charan Das, Rama Chandra Khuntia, party's Jajpur Lok Sabha candidate Ashok Das, who lost by highest margin of 3,20,271 votes, Pradip Majhi, who lost by lowest margin of 2,042 votes in Nabarangpur LS constituency and heads of Congress youth, women, student and Seva Dal wings.
Congress legislative party (CLP) leader Narasingha Mishra, Rajya Sabha member Ranjib Biswal and a few others have intimated their inability to attend the meeting, informed sources said. Though Sunday's meeting is described as part of an all-India exercise to review the Congress debacle, many senior leaders here feel the grand old party could do much more to improve its performances.
The party contested all the 147 assembly and 21 Lok Sabha seats alone, but ended up getting only 16 MLAs, 11 short of what it had got in 2009. The party's vote share fell to 26% from 32.75% in 2009. In terms of number, the Congress got 5593123 of the total votes polled.
The repeated visits of Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi apart, the party had hoped to capitalise on a possible BJD-BJP fight and play a crucial role in forming the government in the state.
But the results showed a major shift of Congress votes towards BJD, resulting in a thumping victory for the ruling party and its virtual decimation.
The party's inability to select candidates till the last minute, collapse of campaign, infighting in the party with some leaders reportedly working with cross purposes are also cited amongst host of factors that contributed to Congress rout in the state.
"Post-election every political party takes stock of the situation. We will place our views before the AICC committee in order to strengthen the Congress in the coming days," said PCC president Jayadev Jena. His predecessor Niranjan Patnaik felt meeting without corrective measures would be a futile exercise. "Weak party structure and lack of strong campaign led to our defeat in the elections," he said.