Congress MP Manish Tewari has said that the party’s defeat in Punjab is a classical example of chopping off neck and legs at the same time. Tewari, who is a part of the G-23 group of dissident leaders demanding an organisational revamp, termed former Punjab Congress president Navjot Singh Sidhu a quintessential loose cannon on the deck of the Punjab Congress. He said that those responsible for Sidhu’s appointment should be held accountable.
“Navjot Singh Sidhu, he was the quintessential loose cannon on the deck of the Punjab Congress. Those who were responsible for his appointment should also be held accountable,” Tewari told the Indian Express. The Anandpur Sahib MP also held Harish Rawat accountable for the party’s defeat in Punjab alleging that he misguided the leadership while adding that it all started with the spectre of appointment of the Mallikarjun Kharge Committee.
“It all started with the spectre of appointment of the Mallikarjun Kharge Committee…The person who is responsible for killing the Congress in Punjab is Harish Rawat. He completely and absolutely misguided the leadership with regard to what the ground situation in Punjab was,” alleged Tewari while adding that Rawat favoured Sidhu due to his ‘completely blinded ambition’ to become a face of Uttarakhand Congress.
Tewari said that while no one was expecting the Congress party’s defeat in May 2021, the party ‘committed such harakiri’ between May 2021 and February 2022 that the party was ‘completely destroyed’. The Congress MP also added that the decision to change Captain Amarinder Singh was absolutely wrong and added that whosoever was telling the Congress leadership that Singh had only 2 per cent popularity was telling absolute lies.
Tewari claimed that Congress is facing an existential crisis and could be looking at the spectre of a ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’ itself. He said that the party had lost 39 polls out of 49 held since 2014 and added that the situation calls for a ‘very deep and immediate surgery to arrest this portentous drift into oblivion’.