Lingayat issue led to Cong defeat: Moily

New Delhi: Senior Congress leader M. Veerappa Moily on Tuesday described early trends suggesting a BJP victory in the Karnataka Assembly polls as “quite disappointing” and attributed his party’s loss to “wrong caste management”.

The Congress should not have raised the Lingayat issue before the polls, Mr Moily said, adding that the party had not managed caste equations well in its electoral strategy.

He also defended Congress president Rahul Gandhi and praised him for engaging in a “positive campaign” as against the “negative campaign” carried out by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah in the run-up to the May 12 election.

“The result is quite disappointing. Had it been on a development ground or a social justice ground, the Congress should have had won. I think somewhere there was something wrong with caste management in Karnataka. That plays an important role,” Mr Moily told news channels.