Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal, who is one of the dissenters who wrote to Sonia Gandhi demanding changes in the party leadership has once again spoke against the organizational structure of the party led by Gandhis since decades.

While speaking to Indian Express, Sibal said that the people no longer saw the party as an “effective alternative”, and that the leadership was not addressing the problems facing the party.

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“The Congress knows the problems besetting it and the answers but is not willing to recognise them, which was coming in the way of finding a solution,” he said.

“We need to do several things at several levels – organisationally, articulation in the media in whatever form, putting up people who the people want to listen to, providing active, thoughtful leaders who can articulate with a lot of circumspection,” he said.

Sibal’s remarks come after the Bihar elections in which party performed poorly managing to bag 19 seats out of 70 seats contested.

In a separate development, a senior leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) calls out the Congress for putting up a half-hearted fight.

“Congress became a shackle for Mahagathbandhan. They had fielded 70 candidates but didn’t hold even 70 public rallies. Rahul Gandhi came for three days, Priyanka [Gandhi Vadra] didn’t come, those who were unfamiliar with Bihar came here. This is not right,” Shivanand Tiwari told news agency ANI.

“Elections were in full swing and Rahul Gandhi was on picnic at Priyanka ji’s place in Shimla. Is party run like that? Allegations can be levelled that manner in which Congress is being run, it’s benefitting BJP,” he said.

NDA has won 125 seats in the 243-member state Assembly, three above the halfway mark.

The legislator meeting of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) yesterday elected JDU chief Nitish Kumar as the Chief Minister candidate of the alliance and leader will be serving the fourth straight term as CM.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has always maintained that Nitish Kumar would retain the post, but the dismal performance of the Janata Dal United (JDU) had put a question on it.

JDU has bagged only 43 seats in the recently concluded Bihar elections and the BJP managed to win 74 seats in the state. The JDU in 2015 assemble polls had won 71 seats and has come down by twenty-eight seats.