The Congress on Tuesday set up a five-member group headed by former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan to evaluate the party’s dismal performance in the Assembly elections, reported PTI. The results of elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry and Assam were declared on May 2.

Other members of the group are Salman Khurshid, Manish Tewari, Vincent H Pala and Jothi Mani, the party said. The group will submit its report within two weeks.

The Congress was decimated in West Bengal, where the Trinamool Congress won with a tally of 213 of 294 seats. The Congress also failed to defeat incumbent governments in Kerala and Assam. In Puducherry, the party was defeated by the NR Congress-led National Democratic Alliance. However, in Tamil Nadu, the Congress was a constituent of the winning Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-led alliance.

The decision to form a panel that would exclusively look into the party’s electoral performance came a day after Congress President Sonia Gandhi admitted that her party needed to “put its house in order” .

“We have to take note of our serious setbacks,” Gandhi had said in her opening remarks at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee. “To say we are deeply disappointed is to make an understatement. I intend to set up a small group to look at every aspect that caused such reverses and report back very quickly.”

Covid relief team

Meanwhile, the Congress on Tuesday also constituted another team under senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad to coordinate the party’s Covid-19 relief work, according to PTI.

Other members of the task force are Ambika Soni, Mukul Wasnik, Pawan Kumar Bansal, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, KC Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh and Randeep Singh Surjewala. The task force also has other party leaders like Manish Chatrath, Ajoy Kumar, Pawan Khera, Gurdeep Singh Sappal and Indian Youth Congress chief BV Srinivas, who has been at the forefront of providing critical aid to desperate citizens amid the devastating second wave of the pandemic.

India has reported more than 3 lakh cases a day every day for the past three weeks, since April 22. On May 1, it hit a new record by crossing the 4-lakh mark, the highest single-day tally by any country in the world. This was surpassed on May 7, when India recorded 4.14 lakh daily cases. So far in May, India’s daily tally has crossed the 4-lakh mark on five days. Thousands have died every day, but reports allege that the government is severely undercounting Covid-19 deaths.