Haryana Assembly polls: Cong hold review meeting, to form fact-finding team

New Delhi: Congress leaders convened a review meeting on Thursday to analyse the party's unexpected defeat in the Haryana Assembly elections and decided to form a fact-finding team that will engage with all candidates to uncover the reasons behind the loss.

As reported by PTI, sources indicated that the leaders discussed the potential factors contributing to the "unexpected" results in Haryana and decided to form a team to investigate these results, including complaints of "discrepancies" in Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), as reported by party candidates.

The meeting included Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, former party chief Rahul Gandhi, AICC general secretary for organisation KC Venugopal, and senior observers Ashok Gehlot and Ajay Maken, along with AICC secretaries for the state. AICC in-charge of Haryana, Deepak Babaria, participated in the meeting online. However, Haryana Congress chief Udai Bhan, CLP leader and former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, and other senior state leaders were not invited to the discussion.

"We held a review meeting on Haryana election results. As you all know, as the exit polls and opinion polls had shown, the results were unexpected. There was a lot of difference between exit polls and actual results. We discussed that, what could be the reasons for that. We will take appropriate steps going forward on this," Maken informed reporters after the meeting.

When asked if infighting had negatively impacted Congress's chances in the elections, Maken responded, "There are various reasons, from the Election Commission to internal differences; we have discussed all that and will do so in the future as well because such a big upset...we cannot discuss everything in one or one-and-a-half hours."

He added that following Thursday's meeting, numerous media reports had circulated based on unofficial sources. "We request you to stick to our formal briefing and desist from any conjectures that deviate from the official brief," Jha stated in his announcement, also shared on X.

This meeting followed the Congress party's demand for a thorough investigation into "discrepancies" discovered in some EVMs during the vote counting of the Haryana elections, with calls for sealing and securing those machines pending the inquiry.

A delegation of top Congress leaders, including former chief ministers Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Ashok Gehlot, along with AICC leaders K C Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh, Ajay Maken, and Pawan Khera, as well as Haryana Congress chief Udai Bhan, met with senior Election Commission officials on Wednesday.

The delegation submitted a memorandum outlining specific complaints from various constituencies in Haryana. Senior party leader Abhishek Singhvi participated in the meeting online.

The Congress leaders claimed that there were at least 20 complaints, including seven documented issues from several assembly constituencies, with many noting that EVMs functioned at 99 per cent battery capacity while the average EVMs were observed to operate at 60 to 70 per cent during the counting process.