Haryana Congress In-Charge Deepak Babaria Offers To Quit Over Poll Drubbing

Chandigarh: Congress Haryana in-charge Deepak Babaria on Monday said that he had offered to resign from his post taking the moral responsibility for the party’s debacle in the recent state assembly election.

Stating that he had offered his resignation to the party high command soon after the poll result last week though no decision had been communicated to him over the matter so far. Babaria said that he told the high command that his health was not well and it was also his moral responsibility in the wake of the result and that the high command could replace him, media reports said. It may be recalled that Babaria's health had deteriorated and he was admitted to AIIMS in Delhi at a time when the tickets were being distributed for the said polls.

Babaria held that he had also offered to resign after Lok Sabha election as in-charge of Delhi but no decision had been taken on that matter either.

It may be recalled that the top leadership of the Congress had held a meeting on Thursday to review the Haryana assembly poll debacle and decided to form a fact-finding team which would also discuss the reasons behind the disastrous defeat with all the party candidates as well as their allegations pertaining to discrepancies in the EVMs. The top leaders who participated in the said meeting included party president Mallikarjun Kharge, former president Rahul Gandhi, general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal, senior observers for elections Ashok Gehlot and Ajay Maken, besides others; Babaria joined the meeting online.

It may be recalled that the Congress was confident of a comeback to power after 10 years in the wake of a strong anti-incumbency wave against BJP which scored a hat-trick in the 2024 assembly election held on October 5, last.

Even though all the exit polls also showed huge victory for Congress, its hopes were shattered as the saffron party defied anti-incumbency winning 48 out of the total 90 seats - with its best showing since 2014 till date - and the Congress could win only 37 seats; while regional party Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) won two seats, three seats were bagged by independent candidates, who, however, have also extended their support to BJP.

Other smaller players, namely Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) failed to even open their account.