Congress state unit chiefs in Manipur and Punjab resign after Assembly poll defeat
On Tuesday, the party’s presidents in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Goa has quit after Sonia Gandhi asked them to do so.
Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu and the party’s in-charge for Manipur Nameirakpam Loken Singh resigned from their posts on Wednesday.
This came a day after Congress President Sonia Gandhi asked the party chiefs of all five states that recently went to polls to resign. The Congress was defeated in the states of Punjab, Goa, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Uttar Pradesh.
The other party chiefs of the states where Congress suffered a setback are Ajay Kumar Lallu in Uttar Pradesh, Ganesh Godiyal in Uttarakhand, Girish Chodankar in Goa.
Chodankar, Lallu, and Godiyal had resigned on Tuesday.
“As desired by the Congress President I have sent my resignation,” Sidhu said in a tweet on Wednesday along with a photo of his letter addressed to Sonia Gandhi.
Meanwhile, Loken Singh said that he was fully responsible for the Congress party’s defeat in Manipur.
“I do hereby submit my resignation from the Presidentship of Manipur Pradesh Congress Committee of the INC on moral ground with immediate effect,” he said in a tweet.
The Congress had managed to win only 55 of the 690 seats spread across the five states in the results declared on March 10. It lost Punjab to the Aam Aadmi Party and failed to wrest power from the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur.
In Punjab, the Congress got only 18 seats, down from 77 in the 2017 Assembly elections.
In Uttar Pradesh, Congress won just two seats in the 403-member state Assembly.
In all states except Uttarakhand, the Congress’ vote share and the number of seats plummeted.
Currently, the party is in power in just two states – Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. In Maharashtra, the Congress is in a coalition government with the Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party.