A combination of factors that include the performance of the Aam Aadmi Party, the Trinamool Congress and differences within the Congress party itself, led to the party's defeat in the recently concluded Assembly elections, All India Congress Committee observer Rajni Patil said on Wednesday.
Addressing media persons in Panaji, Rajni, who has been tasked with conducting a post-mortem of the Congress' poor performance in the Assembly elections, also said that while other political parties like the AAP and the TMC divided the secular vote, the BJP managed to consolidate its vote base, which led to the party winning 20 seats in the polls, just one short of a simple majority.
"Some differences, AAP and TMC and all this all ate our votes," Rajni, AICC in-charge of Jammu & Kashmir, told reporters. Rajni is in Goa on a two-day visit to the coastal state, where she has been tasked with meeting all the party's candidates, as well as top office bearers as part of the process put in place by the AICC to review the poll performance in five states, where Assembly elections, were recently held.
"Secular votes were divided, and BJP votes got together. They (Congress officials) are telling me different stories. We will take a lesson from this and go ahead," Rajni said.
"We have to bounce back. No two ways about it," she also said.
When asked as to when the Congress high command would appoint a new state president for the party in the wake of the resignation of Girish Chodankar following the latest defeat, Rajni said: "It may take some time, (but) not much time".
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