By PTI
NEW DELHI: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday held a meeting with party MPs from Punjab and sought their views on the party’s debacle in the just-concluded assembly polls.
Sources said the MPs stressed that infighting and indiscipline led to the party’s poor performance at the hustings and this must come to an end.
Gandhi heard the views expressed by the parliamentarians and was learnt to have admitted that some mistakes were made in the state, where the party lost power to the Aam Aadmi Party.
Among the MPs who attended the meeting in the Parliament Complex were Preneet Kaur, Manish Tewari, Ravneet Singh Bittu, Shamsher Singh Dullo, Gurjeet Singh Aujla, Santokh Singh Chaudhary and Amar Singh.
Mohammed Sadique and Ambika Soni were, however, not present in the meeting which lasted about an hour.
Incidently, Manish Tewari and Preneet Kaur attended a meeting of leaders of the G-23, which has been critical of the party leadership, later in the evening at Ghulam Nabi Azad’s residence.
The MPs, the sources said, are learnt to have told Gandhi that the party must remain united and efforts should be made to bring everyone together to strengthen it further.
They said some MPs blamed the Punjab leadership, including Navjot Singh Sidhu, Harish Rawat, Harish Chaudhary and Sunil Jakhar, for the poll debacle.
The Congress could win only 18 seats in the 117-member assembly in the just concluded polls.
Some MPs also said that some leaders proved to be liabilities and infighting between top leaders cost the party dearly.
An MP reportedly told the Congress chief that projecting Charanjit Singh Channi as the Dalit chief ministerial face also did not help and proved counter-productive as other sections got alienated from the party.
