Kesri's adversaries planning onslaught on party chief for Punjab rout

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

The anti-Kesri lobby in the Congress fired its first salvo against party president Sitaram Kesri on Monday.

Jagannath Mishra, a known Kesri-baiter, has demanded that a session of the All India Congress Committee be convened to discuss the rout in Punjab.

Dr Mishra told Rediff On The NeT,"The Congress leadership cannot absolve responsibility for the party's disastrous performance in the Punjab poll. I and my colleagues are of the opinion that this important issue cannot be swept under the carpet."

Ever since Kesri took over, Dr Mishra said the Congress chief had claimed that the party was making dynamic progress under his leadership. But such make believe has now been exposed, the former Bihar chief minister added, and it was time for all "right-thinking Congressmen to convey the harsh realities."

The anti-Kesri faction -- including Dr Mishra, Suresh Kalmadi, Rajesh Pilot among others -- have planned a series of meetings to compel the party leadership to discuss the Punjab debacle.

However, Kesri's supporters are girding their loins to stave off the onslaught by Congressmen opposed to the party leader.

At a briefing at the party headquarters on Monday, the general secretary in charge of Punjab affairs, Ghulam Nabi Azad, flatly refused to accept blame for the Congress defeat.

The circumstances of the poll, he insisted, had to be considered and no single reason could be attributed for the defeat. Azad, much to the amusement of the journalists present, waxed eloquent about how "the results in Punjab shows that more than anything else it is a victory for democracy."

Significantly, leaders of the United Front appear to be elated by the Congress defeat in Punjab. Kesri has more than once cautioned the UF government in recent weeks not to take the Congress support for granted, and Front leaders believe that the Punjab rout will put the Congress leader on the defensive.

Janata Dal working president Sharad Yadav said: ''We are grateful to the Congress for its support to our government. But the Punjab poll results have made it clear that everything is not right in the Congress." A CPI-M leader said, ''now that Kesri has to take care of unrest in his party, he will have to be careful about what he says to the United Front government."