'Congress' ranking in Tamil Nadu is slipping': Karti Chidambaram says party needs to take corrective steps, empower state units

Even as the Congress has performed better in the recent Lok Sabha elections, it should not be complacent, Karti Chidambaram has said. Karti, son of veteran Congress leader P Chidambaram, has also underlined that the grand old party's vote share has dropped in Tamil Nadu while some caste-based parties are doing better than the Congress. 

"While we are very pleased with our better performance now, there is no reason to be complacent. There are many many structural things which need to be corrected," the Sivaganga MP said in an interview with The Quint when asked whether the Congress party needed to take some steps considering infighting in some state units and an exodus of senior leaders.  

"I can't speak for the rest of the country. But for Tamil Nadu, I can definitely speak. I know that our ranking in Tamil Nadu is slipping. We are not the third political party as we used to claim. There are other political formations that I think have a slightly higher vote share than us on a standalone basis. So we need to really start taking corrective steps on a state-by-state basis." 

Chidambaram said the Congress must empower state units to make decisions for themselves. "Keep a national kind of an overarching umbrella under which you will operate, but allow state units to be in federal in the true sense and also to be independent in taking decisions based on their ground," he added. 

In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress bettered its performance and won 99 seats, up by 47 from 2019. While the DMK-led alliance won all 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu, the Congress' vote share dropped nearly 2 per cent to 10.67 per cent. The BJP, on the other hand, increased its votes by 7.58 per cent to 11.24 per cent. 

The grand old party has also been facing infighting in some key states such as Karnataka, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh.