Rahul Gandhi to visit Himachal Pradesh on Friday, review party's defeat in Assembly elections

New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi will visit Shimla on 29 December and review the party’s performance in the recently-held Himachal Pradesh Assembly election. [caption id=“attachment_4278515” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of Rahul Gandhi. PTI[/caption] The Congress was defeated by the BJP in the hill state where it had been in power for the last five years. The party managed to bag just 21 seats out of 68, while the BJP won 44 seats. According to party sources, the Congress president will seek the views of party workers and address them at a workers’ meeting in the state capital on his day-long visit to the hill state. He has already held a similar post-poll review in Gujarat, where the party failed to regain power even after over 22 years of BJP rule, despite putting up a spirited fight. The incumbent Congress government could win less than one-third of the seats in the hill state, with sitting chief minister Virbhadra Singh himself winning by a slender margin of 6,051 votes from Arki. Two seats were won by Independents and one by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM). Virbhadra’s son Vikramaditya Singh also marked his maiden victory in the Assembly with a margin of 4,880 votes from Shimla (Rural), the seat his father earlier represented. In the outgoing Assembly, the ruling Congress had 36 seats, the BJP had 26 and six were held by Independents. With inputs from agencies