Seven and a half years after the Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Narendra Modi, replaced it as the country’s premier political party, the Indian National Congress is still not in a position to make a serious effort to arrest its decline. This may affect its ability to play its legitimate role as the only truly national opposition party.

As the organisation that had led the freedom movement, the Congress had a distinct advantage in the early years of Independence.

Initially it wielded power at the Centre as well as the states.

There was no national party that could pose a challenge to it at the national level.

Six decades later an almost similar situation prevails. After seizing power at the Centre, the Bharatiya Janata Party strengthened its position nationally.  It is now in power in more states than the Congress. No party, including the Congress, is in a position to mount an effective challenge to it.

There is, however, a vital difference between the situation in the early years and at present. This is the presence of a large number of snall national or regional parties which can hold the most powerful national party at bay in their strongholds.

The overweening national ambitions of the leaders of some of these parties appear to be an obstacle to attempts to forge opposition unity.

The Congress is the only truly national opposition party. But this alone will not give it primacy in the opposition ranks. The rest of the opposition must see it as capable of taking on the BJP in the states where it is BJP’s main challenger. Its performance in some BJP-ruled states in recent by-elections shows it may be down but not out.

At the moment the Congress is facing serious organisational problems at all levels.

The roots of the party’s current problems at the state level and below can be traced to developments in the early post-Nehru period.

In 1967 the Congress had to face general elections without Nehru for the first time. When Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri died in 1966 the organisational leaders who had taken control of the party apparatus in the big states favoured Indira Gandhi as his successor with a view to exploiting the Nehru charisma in the polls. They imagined they could control her.

With that end in view, on Zakir Husain’s death, they turned down her suggestion to nominate senior Union Minister Jagjivan Ram as the party’s Presidential candidate. They chose one from among themselves, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, as the Presidential candidate.

Indira Gandhi threw her weight behind Vice-President V.V. Giri, who resigned his post and entered the contest as an independent candidate. Giri won.

The party split. The bulk of the rank and file lined up behind Indira Gandhi’s faction. Instead of rebuilding party units at lower levels and facilitating the rise of new leasers who command the loyalty of the rank and file, she worked with nominated leaders who were loyal to her.

Over the years Congress units in many states withered away. Where there were functioning units, they were composed of competing factions loosely held together by common loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Rajiv Gandhi, who succeeded his mother, too, continued the practice of working with nominated leaders in the states. There was no rebuilding of the party apparatus.  

After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination by the Sri Lankan outfit Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the family did not offer anyone to head the party.

Seven years later, as the party’s fortune was declining, Rajiv’s wife, Sonia Gandhi, took over as Congress President at the instance of party leaders who felt that the Nehru-Gandhi family must helm it again.

More than a quarter century later, Sonia Gandhi still holds the post.

It is well-known that Italian-born Sonia was against her husband giving up his job as a pilot and entering politics. She probably revised her thinking and herself stepped into politics to keep the party seat warm for her son, Rahul Gandhi.

When the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance won a majority in the 2004 parliamentary elections, instead of pressing a personal claim, she picked Manmohan Sigh as the Prime Ministerial candidate, denying the BJP the opportunity to raise a furore over her foreign origin.

Before the 2019 parliamentary elections Sonia Gandhi handed over the post of party President to Rahul who had been active in the party for several years. But he resigned the post, assuming moral responsibility for the party’s poor poll performance. Thereupon the post went back to his mother.

Time and tide wait for none. The longer the Congress takes to put its house in order the slimmer its chances of comeback.