You cannot paint over it. The Congress was decimated by the BJP, which is led by the controversial but increasingly high profile Narendra Modi, like it or not. The rest of it is semantics. Whether it was anti-incumbent defeat or a call for change or a warning flare to the Congress for next year’s general election the fact is the country was sick to its guts of the scandal and the corruption and the grandstanding, which went with it.

Ironically, the next year will be test for the BJP’s credibility because if they fall at the starting gate the Congress could take advantage of their ineptitude. It has happened before. If there is one positive that everyone can carry it is the system works, shoddy, clumsy, yet efficient. Power was handed over sans violence. The defeated concede in the greatest traditions and the winners now hold the reins.

Not just that but over 60 years down the road Indians voted, the highest ever in Delhi and the rich and the famous, the pundits of the drawing room came out and did their bit. It was not a poor man’s election and yet, in delightful counterpoint the Aam Aadmi Party (common man party) picked up a great deal of slack and made its mark like no third party has ever done. Ergo, both sides of the social coin were covered.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her son and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi today said they accepted the party’s defeat in the Assembly elections in four states and promised to take all necessary action to rectify its mistakes and its way of functioning.

“It goes without saying, we are very, very disappointed at the results, but we accept the verdict of the people in all humility,” Ms. Gandhi told newspersons this evening after the results and counting trends for all the seats in Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh became available.

With her son by her side, Ms. Gandhi also congratulated the party’s opponents, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for their performance. She also had a word of praise for the party’s workers, who, she said, had worked hard during the election campaign.

“Naturally, the results call for deep introspection. We have to understand, to look at the reasons for this defeat,” she said.

“We have to look at the way we took, or did not take, our message to the people. Also, we have to look at how our party is equipped, or not so well-equipped, to run an election campaign,” she said.

Ms. Gandhi said there would be a number of reasons for the defeat. “Obviously, people are unhappy, or they would not have given such a result,” she said, and cited the price rise as one of the reasons for the people’s unhappiness. “We will take all necessary action to rectify our mistakes or way of functioning,” she said.

Ms.Gandhi said the situation in the Lok Sabha elections, due next year, would be different. In elections at the state level, people look at who would lead them at the state level, she said. “At the national level, they will look at who is likely to guide or govern them,” she said.

To a question about who the party’s prime ministerial candidate would be for the Lok Sabha elections, she said, “People need not worry. At the opportune time, the prime ministerial candidate, the name of him, will be announced,” she said.

Mr. Gandhi said the people had given the Congress a message through the elections, and he and the party had heard it with not only their minds, but also their hearts.

“The Congress party has the ability to transform itself. The Congress party has the ability to stand up to the expectations of the people. And the Congress party is going to do it,” he stated.

“We work for the people of this country, and we have a duty to listen to you,” he said.

“We have heard what you have said and we are going to do whatever you want us to do to live up to your expectations.”

“But I think what we need to do as a party is move ahead of just giving good governance to a place, a paradigm where we are giving serious space to the common man. Political parties are not giving adequate voice to the man on the street. It’s our job to do that. I am going to put all my efforts in transforming the organization of the Congress party and…give you an organization that you can be proud of and has your voice embedded inside it,” he said.

Mr. Gandhi said the major parties needed to start thinking of the politics of empowerment of people. “I am going to do it very aggressively in the party. I am going to work with the leadership of the party and make this central,” he said.

To a question, he accepted that AAP had involved a lot of people whom the traditional parties did not.

“We are going to learn from that and we are going to do a better job than anyone else in the country, in ways that you cannot imagine right now,” he said.

In response to another question, he said the Congress had a vision and a perspective of the country and the BJP had its own.

“Our job is to push our perspective and what we focus on. My focus is what I can help the people of this country achieve. How can we transform the country to use the power of the youth in this country? What the BJP and other parties are doing is their concern,” he added.

- With inputs from netindian and Sonny Abraham