It's too late, Cong leaders tell Rahul Gandhi in Bihar meet

New Delhi (IANS) : Even as Bihar Assembly elections are a couple of months away, state Congress leaders told Rahul Gandhi during an online party meeting that it's too late to prepare for the electoral battle in the absence of an organisational structure in the eastern state, party sources said on Friday.

Rahul Gandhi held the meeting with state unit leaders through videoconference on Thursday, during which former Union Minister Tariq Anwar was among the leaders who maintained that the Congress should have started preparing after the Lok Sabha polls in April-May 2019.

The sources said that party leaders pointed out that the Congress organisational set-up in the state is weak.

"It's too late," the sources quoted the state leaders as saying, even as Rahul Gandhi said that the party will finalise its seat-sharing agreement with the Grand Alliance partners in time.

The Congress said on Thursday that 1,000 party cadres up to the block levels attended the meeting, which later turned into a virtual rally as over one lakh person joined in through various social media platforms.

Rahul Gandhi asked the party workers to go into the Bihar elections with a "positive agenda" of providing good governance to the state's people who are allegedly suffering due to unchecked spread of coronavirus as well as devastating flood.

The Congress has a tough task ahead on seat adjustment with the Rashtriya Janata Dal. In the 2015 Bihar elections, both parties contested in alliance with Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United but it has since jumped on to the BJP bandwagon.

There are about 100 seats that were contested by the JD-U in 2015, which need to be distributed among Grand Alliance partners. The Congress wants a major chunk of these seats. The sources said that the Congress may finally agree to contest 70 of the 243 Assembly seats.