Haryana Cong incharge offers to leave

Haryana Congress in-charge Deepak Babaria on Monday said he has offered to resign from his post, taking moral responsibility for the defeat in the assembly polls. Babaria said he tendered his resignation from the high command soon after the results of the Haryana assembly polls were released last week, but no decision was communicated to him on the matter.

“Last week, after the results, I offered to resign. I offered the high command that you can replace me. My health is not well and it is also my moral responsibility in the wake of the results. Keeping this in mind, I said this to the high command that ‘if you see fit, you can replace me,'” Babaria said.

Also after the Lok Sabha elections, I offered to resign as Delhi in-charge, but no decision was taken on this. Similarly, no decision was taken (for Haryana) but it was my responsibility to offer (resign),” he said.

Congress top brass last Thursday held a review meeting on the party’s surprise defeat in the Haryana Assembly elections and decided to form a fact-finding team that will speak to all its candidates to find out the reasons for the debacle.

Sources said that the leaders during the meeting discussed the possible reasons for the “unexpected” results in Haryana and decided to set up a team to ascertain the reasons behind such results and also look into complaints of “discrepancies” in the EVMs, alleged by the party candidates . .

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, former party chief Rahul Gandhi, AICC organization general secretary KC Venugopal, AICC senior poll observers Ashok Gehlot and Ajay Maken as well as AICC state secretaries participated of the review meeting. AICC in charge of Haryana Babaria participated in the online meeting.

The Congress also demanded a thorough investigation into the “discrepancies” found in some electronic voting machines (EVMs) during the counting of votes at polls in Haryana and demanded that such EVMs be sealed and secured pending the investigation.

A delegation of top Congress leaders comprising former chief ministers Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Ashok Gehlot and AICC leaders KC Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh, Ajay Maken and Pawan Khera besides Haryana Congress chief Udai Bhan met meet with top Electoral Commission officials here on Wednesday.

Congress leaders have claimed that there are at least 20 such complaints, many of them referring to EVMs running at 99 percent battery capacity, while average EVMs were operating at 60 to 70 percent battery capacity during the count. .

The Congress seemed confident of dislodging the BJP dispensation, which was in power for 10 years and faced anti-incumbency.

However, the BJP, with 48 seats, stalled the Congress’s comeback attempt and also proved wrong several exit polls which predicted a comfortable victory for the grand old party in Haryana. The Congress managed to gather 37 seats in the 90-member assembly.