Panjim: Following the party’s humiliating debacle during the recently held Zilla Panchayat (ZP) election, Congress has laid its focus to regain people’s trust, promote new and young faces and to adopt a winning strategy ahead of the 2022 State Assembly polls.
The All India Congress Committee (AICC) Goa in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao, who is on two-day visit to Goa to review the ZP fiasco, is of the view that party senior leaders need to get themselves involved more in the election process including campaigning. A detailed assessment report will be submitted to party High Command led by INC President Sonia Gandhi.
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Rao on Tuesday held series of meeting with Goa Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) President Girish Chodankar, Leader of Opposition Digambar Kamat, MLAs Aleixo Reginaldo, Pratpasingh Rane and Luizinho Faleiro to get a first hand update as to what went wrong during the ZP polls, how to strengthen the party organization and how to regain the people’s trust.
Speaking to the media post the meeting, Rao said that the main agenda before him is to ensure that the party regains people’s trust, gives more enthusiasm to the workers and reorganisation of the party, right from block level to State.
“Though we worked hard for the ZP election… our candidates worked hard…we were expecting better results…but somewhere I feel we should have worked in a better fashion and our leaders should get involved more in the campaigning and election process. We are introspecting so that we can take suitable measures in the future,” he said.
“Congress has done a lot of good work for Goa …where we have gone wrong. That is for us to introspect and correct it…people of Goa want Congress…like Congress… but we have to also put in the right kind of efforts and have a proper strategy to win,” the AICC leader said.
Rao added that the time has come when the party needs to introduce new and young faces. “We need to get into fresh blood. New faces…New candidates. We need to regain people’s trust…,” he commented.
Rao also contributed the party’s ZP defeat to the delay in holding the elections, which were initially due in March. “ZP election was lost due to the delay…we had no idea when the election was going to take place…on the other hand, BJP was aware…we had no time to campaign. Also BJP lured voters with a promise of 10,000 jobs, restarting mining etc…today nobody is talking about that…BJP spent money like water,” he said.
