Congress suffers another setback, 2 more chiefs quit

The Congress continues to face an exodus after the severe defeat it took in the recently concluded general elections.

Former MP Dr Ajoy Kumar on Monday offered to resign from the post of president of Jharkhand Pradesh Congress Committee after the party could manage to win only one seat in the state in the recently held Lok Sabha polls.

Out of the total 14 Lok Sabha seats in Jharkhand, the Congress managed to win one, while the BJP and its regional ally All Jharkhand Students Union bagged 12 of them. One seat went to the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, a coalition partner of the Congress party.

Similarly, Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar has also offered to resign from his post after he lost elections from Gurdaspur -- a seat he wrestled from the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2017 by-polls.

The Congress won eight of Punjab's 13 Lok Sabha seats in recently-concluded Lok Sabha elections. Jakhar, however, lost to newly-minted BJP leader Sunny Deol by a considerable margin of 82,459 votes.

Late actor Vinod Khanna had won the seat for the BJP in 1998, 1999, 2004 and 2014. in 2017, his death necessitated the by-poll in which Jakhar emerged victorious.

Along with Punjab, the state unit presidents of Assam, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Madhya Pradesh have also offered to resign from their positions after the party fared poorly the national polls in each of their states.

As per sources, Congress president Rahul Gandhi, during the party's working committee meeting, also offered to resign from his post. However, it was declined by senior leaders.

Further denying any such development, the party on Monday released a statement, saying, "The Congress party expects everyone including the media to respect the sanctity of a closed-door meeting of the CWC. Various conjectures, speculations, insinuations, assumptions, gossip, and rumour mongering in a section of the media is uncalled for and unwarranted."

The Congress's drubbing in the Lok Sabha polls has become a cause of embarrassment for the party's top brass. They managed to win only 52 seats, far behind the BJP's massive 303.