Rita Bahuguna Joshi offers to resign over UP results

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New Delhi, March 9: Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi Friday met Congress president Sonia Gandhi and offered to step down following the party’s poor performance in the state elections.

“I have offered to resign,” Joshi, who owned moral responsibility for the defeat, told mediapersons after the meeting.

Joshi said she had briefed the party president on the results and given her views on the party’s debacle.

“There is need for appropriate introspection. There are many reasons… which factor was prominent has to be analysed,” she said.

Responding to a query, she said party leader and Sultanpur MP Sanjay Singh’s comment that he was not asked to campaign was “regrettable”. Sanjay Singh’s wife Amita Singh also lost her election in Amethi, the party’s stronghold and the parliamentary constituency of Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi.

Asked if Sonia Gandhi had accepted her offer of resignation, Joshi said a decision would be taken in due course of time.

Congress sources said Sonia Gandhi had conveyed that while there would be introspection on the results, party leaders in the state should focus on future challenges.

The Congress won 28 of 403 seats in the Uttar Pradesh assembly, which was just six more than its tally in the 2007 elections.

Rahul Gandhi, who led the campaign, has already accepted responsibility for the party’s poor showing though efforts were made by party leaders to insulate him from the results.

The results came as a big disappointment for the party as it fared poorly even in Gandhi family pocket-boroughs of Amethi and Rae Bareli. The party won only two of ten seats in the two parliamentary constituencies. Rae Bareli is represented by party chief Sonia Gandhi.

IANS