Haryana Assembly Elections 2024 | Senior leaders put own interests above party's, Rahul tells Congress review meet

New Delhi: Top Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday told senior functionaries that Haryana leaders put their own interests above the party’s interests, sources said, as the grand old party decided to set up a fact-finding committee to go into the reasons for the debacle in the state.

Rahul’s remarks came at a meeting at Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s residence, where the party’s senior observers—Ashok Gehlot and Ajay Maken, among others—gave a preliminary analysis of the Haryana poll debacle.

Haryana leaders like Bhupinder Hooda, Kumari Selja, Randeep Surjewala, Ajay Yadav and Uday Bhan were not part of the meeting and the central leadership is likely to hold deliberations with them soon.

The meeting, which was also attended by Congress General Secretary (Organisation) K C Venugopal, discussed ways to take forward the complaints about “glaring discrepancies” in the EVM. The fact-finding committee will speak to candidates in this regard.

Sources said Rahul told them that he has nothing much to say except that the party's interests were kept second while leaders’ interests remained on top, which led to the party being defeated for the third time since 2014 in Assembly elections in the state. After the meeting, in an unusual move, Rahul also came to the Congress headquarters where he met party workers.

Rahul has been upset with the Haryana leadership and had earlier expressed his reservations about the way the campaign was held. After the results, Rahul took almost 24 hours to make his first comment on the Haryana polls when he said the results were “unexpected” and that they would apprise the Election Commission about the complaints of some Congress candidates.

During the candidate selection process, sources said Rahul had taken initiative to reopen discussions in the Central Election Committee after initially concluding it, after he received complaints from Kumari Selja, Randeep Surjewala and Ajay Yadav, who are known Bhupinder Hooda detractors.

He was also said to be upset with the way the campaigning was held. Incidentally, Rahul was not present at the launch of the seven guarantees for Haryana on September 18, apparently unhappy over the way leaders were announcing guarantees at their whims and fancies without proper discussion.

After the meeting, Gehlot said they were taking the loss “very seriously” and they would go to the root of the issue, as exit polls and the public were saying in one voice that the Congress would form the government.

Maken told reporters that there are several reasons, including the allegations of discrepancies in EVMs and factionalism, and all those would be discussed.