New Delhi: A string of electoral defeats in states and the threat of mid-term polls to Lok Sabha, which ironically looks receded because of its reverses, left the Congress dispirited in 2007.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who plainly told her party that neither she nor her son Rahul had a magic band, may look to the year that is coming for the wheels of fortune to change in their favour.

Assembly elections are scheduled in nine states, including BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh, ahead of Lok Sabha polls.

The party would hope that the anti-incumbency factor which worked against it in Punjab, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, may do a favour to it in the saffron-ruled states where already the BJP had suffered defeats in by-elections.

Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, of course, were different cups of tea for the party had not looked up for less than two decades.

The poll debacle in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh at the fag end of the year brought the party's morale down while the sole consolation during the year for it was the victory in Goa and Manipur.

Facing a saffron surge, Congress has been introspecting on the way ahead and how to revive and rejuvenate the organisation amidst suggestion of emulating the British Labour Party, which was transformed by Tony Blair.

Source : PTI