We couldn’t connect with voters, will introspect why: Kamal Nath

“Kamal Nath was unable to energise the cadres the way Amit Shah could. The BJP announced its candidates much before we did and we could not grapple with the rebellions. Many of our workers joined other parties and damaged our prospects,” said another Congress leader from Bhopal.

“Our organisation structure was missing in many places. It is difficult to build it from scratch at the last hour. The BJP has more workers and money; they launched a massive public outreach programme… We had scarce resources,” said a Congress worker from the Bundelkhand region.

There is a feeling among many Congress workers that they were unable to communicate to the voters to make them understand the party’s policies. The party also grappled with a lack of resources to match the BJP which undertook over 600 rallies, with CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan alone attending 164 of them. The number of Congress poll rallies in the state stood at 300.

“Our social media campaign was good, but we were spread thin in many places where we should have focused more. We will examine the results in the coming days… We did work hard but lost,” said a senior leader who was a member of the Congress election committee.

Some party insiders said the Congress lacked a narrative to woo the voters.

“We promised a caste census, which in principle is good but it is difficult to explain to voters what benefit they would get,” said a Congress leader.

The party leaders also blamed the lack of fresh faces, sloppy election management and failure to stem rebellions in the party as reasons for the defeat.