'Rahul Gandhi can't be blamed for UP loss'

“Rahul Gandhi per se can’t be blamed for it . It was me, it was us”, Pravin Aron, Congress MP from Rai Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, said

Aron was on CNN IBN for a late night discussion on the findings of the AK Antony Committee that probed the reasons for the Congress party’s poor showing in the recent UP assembly elections.  Aron also stressed that the party members in UP are not protecting Rahul Gandhi since the Congress leader had already held himself responsible for Congress’s poor performance in UP.

The three-member committee headed by Antony also had Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and Union Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde as members. It had the mandate to look into the causes of the Congress’s poor performance in the recent Assembly elections. The Committee, has, however, avoided any critical assessment of Rahul Gandhi‘s role, who had undertaken a vigorous campaign in UP in order to rebuild the party.

When asked if Gandhi would face the media about the debacle in the UP elections and the Antony report, Aron said, “Let Rahul_ji_ decide, everything doesn’t have to go the media.”

Aron also tried to give a positive spin to the protests Rahul Gandhi faced in Amethi by his own party workers.

“If workers are saying something it is good, if we don’t listen to them then we are a aristocratic party,” he said.

There are two more assembly elections coming up in Gujarat and Karnataka, also the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. “We won the 2009 UP Loksabha elections with Rahul Gandhi, so only time will tell,” Aron said.