Congress not an effective opposition now: Kapil Sibal

NEW DELHI: Congress MP and member of the G23 group of dissenters Kapil Sibal said the party had ceased to be an effective opposition party, with no efforts made to strengthen the organisation.

In a TV interview, he said Congress was without a party president for over one and half year since Rahul Gandhi announced that he was not interested in being the party chief. "How can a party function without a leader for one and half years. Congress workers don't know where to go," he said. Sibal said the recent polls had shown that besides states like UP where Congress was not a factor, even in Gujarat and MP where it was in a direct battle with BJP, the results were shockingly bad.

"We lost all eight seats in Gujarat. 65% votes have gone to BJP though these were seats vacated by Congress defectors. In MP, all 28 seats fell vacant because of Congress defectors but Congress won only eight seats," he said, adding, "Where there is a one to one battle with BJP, we aren't an effective alternative. There must be something wrong. We must do something about it," he said.

The senior lawyer lamented that he raised the issue in a parliamentary group meeting in July and then 23 party leaders wrote a letter to the Congress president in August, but "there was no discussion, no one reaches out to us".