'Antony committee warning on ignoring Hindus forgotten by Rahul'

Unhappiness in Congress over Ayodhya decision.

The decision of the Congress leadership not to attend the Ram temple consecration in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh has brought into focus the findings of the 2014 A.K. Antony committee that was formed by then party president Sonia Gandhi to find out the reasons for the party's debacle in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

The said committee, which apart from Antony had senior party leaders such as Mukul Wasnik, R.C. Khuntia and Avinash Pandey as members, had submitted their report on 14 August 2015 after working on it for close to 75 days.

The said report, apart from pointing at other tertiary factors, had stated that the policy of appeasement of the minorities was one of the main reasons for the defeat of the Congress in the elections. This stand of the Congress, as per the committee, had created a perception that the Congress was "anti-Hindu" and mixed with other reasons, led to the Congress slumping to its worst ever tally of 44 seats.

Party sources, who had accessed the report, said the idea of the Congress leadership of making the 2014 elections a battle between secularism and communalism, created an image that the Congress was "prominority" to the extent that the whole idea became "antimajority".

The findings of the said report were never made public. A senior party leader, who had accessed the findings of the report, stated that while minority-appeasement policy proved counterproductive, on top of that the minority voters too had a trust deficit with Congress as there was a huge gap between programme announcement and actual delivery on the ground.