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Rahul spared blame for UP failure
Published on Wed, May 16, 2007 at 22:11, Updated on Thu, May 17, 2007 at 02:19 in 
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New Delhi: Breaking their silence for the first time since the poor performance of the Congress in the Uttar Pradesh elections, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi blamed the party's organisational weakness for the disappointing outcome.
"Basically what happened was that we don't have an organisation there. For a long haul, we have to build that. And we are going to do that." That is Rahul Gandhi's post-mortem of the poll outcome.
He had spearheaded a failed campaign in Uttar Pradesh, but then in the Congress tradition, you seldom put your hand up and accept responsibility. In fact, Rahul Gandhi's may have been a downhill journey, the Congress after all has a lower tally in UP as compared to the last elections, but it is the party's organisation which has to be taken to task.
While the young Gandhi did not take any responsibility for the debacle even though he had personally led the party's campaign in the state, he did promise to be back in the state soon. Earlier, at the Congress Parliamentary Party meeting, mother Sonia Gandhi complemented Rahul and his team for their UP campaign.
Congress' performance raises question over Rahul Gandhi's political maturity and his ability to win votes. But it also raises a larger question: Shouldn't the top leadership of the Congress take responsibility for having failed to build an organisation in the politically important state?
But, no one is in a mood to do so in the party. "Organisational kaamjudi UP mein rahi, yeh hum jante hai aur humne is baat ko swikar kiya hai, (there are organisation shortcomings in the UP Congress, we know that and we have accepted that)," Ashwini Kumar, senior Congress leader, accepts.
After UP, Gujarat is the next big test for Sonia Gandhi and her party. There too, there are major organisational shortcomings, maybe not so much like UP.
There too, the party will try to capitalise on the Gandhi charisma and secular credentials. In fact, Sonia Gandhi is already focussed on Gujarat. She hit out at Narendra Modi for the fake encounters and the Vadodara art attack recently
But the party seems complacent from the failure of the BJP in UP. Had the BJP done well in UP, the Congress wouldn't have been as complacent.
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