Mumbai, Feb 20 (PTI) The Congress leadership is likely to ponder over the reasons for the party's debacle in the Mumbai civic polls after the results of the elections to five state assemblies are out in the first week of March, party sources said today. There is disquiet among the party's rank and file following its failure to wrest control of the country's richest civic body--Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation-- from the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance that has ruled it for 16 years despite stitching up an alliance with NCP. Though nobody has publicly blamed the state Congress leadership for the party's performance which saw its tally plunge from 71 in 2007 to 52 this time, in private, party workers and office bearers are targeting city unit chief Kripashankar Singh, state party president Manikrao Thakre and Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan for the debacle. "They were responsible for the poor strategy, planning and execution," a senior leader said on condition of anonymity. "Chavan's over-confidence that Congress could win Mumbai just by aligning with the NCP, which has no base in the city, was immature," said the leader. He said the Chief Minister's statement that Shiv Sena will lose its relevance after the results "boomeranged" as it mobilised the Sena's traditional voters and galvanised its cadres. "Congress went into the elections unprepared especially in the backdrop of 50 per cent reservation for women and delimitation of wards. None of the senior leaders was taken into confidence since the start," another party functionary said. Factional feud among senior leaders also took a toll as Chavan failed to rein in dissent, he said. That Kripashankar Singh and former city Congress chief Gurudas Kamat do not get along well is known to everybody. Some in the party feel that Mumbai results would adversely impact its prospects in the poll-bound states. Congress contested 169 and NCP 58 seats of the 227-member civic body. As if the Mumbai defeat was not enough, the party also faced reverses in Chavan's home district Satara where it lost to NCP in the Zilla Parishad polls. Former Chief Ministers and currently members of the union Cabinet Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sushilkumar Shinde, however, helped the party retain its strongholds of Latur Zilla Parishad and Solapur municipal corporation. PTI MR SK SK
