After election defeat, Congress to disband Praveen Chakravarty-headed data analytics department: Sources

The Congress Party's data analytics department had come in for massive criticism after the embarrassing defeat in the Lok Sabha election. Now, sources have confirmed that the party is set to disband the Praveen Chakravarty-led department, which had predicted a huge win for the grand old party. 

According to reports, the team had reached its assessment based on information from the Shakti app, which it had set up. These assessments had played a key role in the selection of Congress candidates in several constituencies. The data analytics team had told Rahul Gandhi that the Congress was gaining traction on the ground, and that his line of campaign was working. However, the reality turned out to be starkly different, as Congress managed to win a mere eight seats more than its all-time low of 44 in 2014. The party drew a blank in 17 states of the country, another thing that it had not foreseen. 

Praveen Chakravarty, who was a visible face on the media circuit before the elections, has gone incommunicado after the shock results of May 23. He had repeatedly said that the Congress would atleast triple its 2014 tally - that's about 132 seats. He had also repeatedly rejected opinion and exit polls, which predicted doom for the Congress. But in the end, he was found to have missed his mark by a long way, and the polls were largely correct in predicting the trend of the elections.

Many media reports also gave unflattering details about how the Shakti app was flawed and never really provided any genuine insights to the leaders. Chakravarty had reportedly been paid crores by the party, is set to be shown the door. With him, the rest of the members of his team are also likely to be fired. This comes at a time when the grand old party is looking for a reboot. The party is currently in a state of flux looking for a new leader, after Rahul Gandhi put his foot down and said that he is not going to withdraw his resignation.

The next chief whoever it is, will have to take a call if at all the Congress needs a revamped data analytics department. The new leader will also have to decide how seriosuly such inputs would be taken into account while selecting candidates and zeroing in on the poll strategy.