After assuming office, Lovely tried to rejuvenate the party and had launched an aggressive campaign to regain the lost ground. However, the effort did not show tangible result as all the seven party candidates were defeated by huge margins.
Two Union Ministers Kapil Sibal and Krishna Tirath as well as AICC general secretary Ajay Maken could no put up a strong fight as all of them were relegated to third position besides poor performance by four other sitting MPs. The margin of difference between the winning candidates and the Congress contestants were over two to three lakh votes in most of the constituencies.
In high-profile Chandni Chowk constituency, BJP's Harsh Vardhan polled over 4.36 lakh votes while Congress' Kapil Sibal got around 1.75 lakh votes.
Congress had won all the seven seats in 2009 Lok Sabha polls and was confident of retaining at least two seats. Refusing to publicly talk about the defeat, a number of candidates, on condition of anonymity, blamed perception of corruption against central government and price rise as reason for their defeat.
“Failing to occupy even second position in any of the seven seats is really demoralising for the party,” said a senior Delhi Congress leader.
