UPCC chief Joshi offers to resign following poll debacle

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Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi on Friday met Congress President Sonia Gandhi and offered to resign owning moral responsibility for the poll debacle.

After meeting Gandhi for the first time after the poll results, Joshi told reporters here that she has owned the responsibility for the defeat and offered to step down. She said that the Congress President will decide on the issue in due course.

Asked about the reasons for the party's crushing defeat in the Assembly polls, Joshi said that there were reasons for it and party leaders will sit down and take stock of.

Joshi had said on Thursday that the whole party cadre was collectively responsible for the debacle and it was wrong to engage in blame game at this moment when the party is in crisis in the state.

On the day the results were out, Digvijay Singh, party general secretary in-charge of UP, is learnt to have offered to resign. He was, however, evasive on the issue, saying it was between him and the Congress President.

Rahul Gandhi has already accepted responsibility for the party's poor showing in UP, even though Congress leaders have made frantic attempts to insulate him from the UP results, saying Gandhi created the wave, which a leader is supposed to, and it was for the cadres and local leaders to turn the wave into votes.

The Congress had finished fourth in the elections during which Rahul Gandhi had led from the front and the party could secure only 28 seats.

Even in Amethi and Rae Bareli, the pocketboroughs of Gandhi family, the results were a shocker to the party as it managed to win only two of the ten assembly seats. The Parliamentary seats are represented by Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi.