Congress forms four-member panel under Thorat to review Legislative Council poll results

Elections to the teachers' and graduates' constituencies of the Maharashtra Legislative Council were held recently. Of the five seats that went to the polls, the Congress won only the Nagpur graduates' constituency. The Maha Vikas Aghadi did well in the elections, but the Congress on its own did not do as well as expected.

The Maharashtra Congress has now begun preparing to look within. The state Congress has formed a four-member committee to examine closely the results in the Nagpur graduates', Pune graduates' and Amravati teachers' constituencies.

The committee has been formed on the directions of the All India Congress Committee and on the suggestion of Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee president Harshwardhan Sapkal. Its members are Congress Working Committee member Balasaheb Thorat, MP Chandrakant Handore, Arif Naseem Khan and AICC secretary B. M. Sandeep. They have been given the task of finding out the mistakes made in the Council elections and the reasons for the defeat.

The committee's job is not only to look at the results. It has to examine the entire election process. It will look at what the party's campaign strategy was in the constituencies concerned, how coordination at the local level went, and what the real reasons were behind the wins or losses.

It will also be examined whether there were any shortcomings on the party's part during the election, whether the campaign was given as much effort as it should have been, and whether local leaders coordinated properly. The committee will also study whether events of earlier elections had any effect on the present results.

The committee must submit its detailed report within three weeks to Dr Sirivella Prasad, the party's Maharashtra in-charge. A copy of the report will also go to state president Harshwardhan Sapkal.

The report will carry recommendations on the shortcomings of the election, the weaknesses of the organisation and what changes should be made going forward. With elections coming up, it will be important to see what lessons the Congress draws from the report and what changes it makes to its strategy.