Kalaburagi: While unwilling to do a postmortem of his defeat in the recent Lok Sabha election from Kalaburagi, veteran Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge on Monday underscored the need to fix the “conspirators”, who had worked systematically to undermine him in the constituency .
Speaking at a function organised to thank the party workers of Kalaburagi south and north assembly segments, who had worked for him, Mr Kharge said, “A defeat is a defeat, let us accept it. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has won polls from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and Gujarat on the basis of blatant lies. Over 200 people were deputed to my constituency and paid Rs 15,000 monthly for over a year to work to defeat me. But I don’t want to blame anyone for my defeat. It could be due to some defects in my personality and style of functioning or we may not have been able to effectively communicate our achievements to voters. Also, some leaders may have only pretended to work for me. We need to analyse this later. But we must identify the conspirators and fix them. Otherwise the party's prospects will suffer.”
Dismissing the role of local leaders like Malikayya Guttedar and Baburao Chinchansur in his defeat, he added, “Some local leaders may take credit for my defeat, but it's mainly due to the lies spoken by Mr Modi and the conspiracy that he and Amit Shah hatched with the RSS that is responsible.”
While admitting that he was upset by his defeat, his first in 50 years, Mr Kharge. however. advised his partymen not to be disheartened. “It is not my personal defeat, but of Congress ideology,” he said.
