Then the times changed and the Congress party became weak. Party leaders, who did not get anything, quit and formed their own party. The latest is Ajit Jogi. His reputation has been under a cloud for long while his importance in the Congress declined. Having become the first Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh after its formation in 2000, he lost the state to the BJP in 2003, which has held it since then; meanwhile the Congress has frittered an inordinate amount of political capital in trying to defend him in a string of controversies. Jogi’s exit should have been the opportunity to signal the regeneration of Congress in the state.

Jogi has reportedly said many people have carved out a space for themselves after leaving the Congress and many of them are successful. His conveniently forgot to mention the names of those who were unsuccessful and only recalled the names of successful ones. He quoted the example of Mamata Banerjee and Sharad Pawar but forgot that these leaders have formidable base and following in their respective states. Jogi has yet to carve out his base and following as Mamata and Sharad Pawar.

With the exit of Jogi after 30-year stint, Chhattisgarh joins a growing number of states from where such departures have taken place. In 1998, Mamata quit the Congress to form the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal; 16 years later, the Congress’s area of influence remains restricted to three districts in northern part of the state.

In 1999 Sharad Pawar left the Congress to form Nationalist Congress party in Maharashtra; from that year till 2014, the Congress remained in power but always with the support of the NCP. That same year, the late Mufti Mohammed Sayeed quit the Congress to form People’s Democratic Party in Jammu and Kashmir. These departures took place in the Congress’s wilderness years, when the BJP-led NDA was ruling the country.

In 2011 Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy left the Congress to form the YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh ahead of the bifurcation of the state. In2014 Assembly election, the Congress won two seats in Telangana assembly, and none in AP Assembly. Five years before that, the Congress’s score in the undivided AP Assembly was 156, and it was in power for the second term.

Earlier this year, Kalikho Pul quit the Congress in Arunachal Pradesh and became the Chief Minister with the help of the BJP there. If in the above mentioned states, the Congress stalwarts left to form their own regional parties, in Haryana and Assam, the departures have been to the BJP. In the run up to the general elections in 2014, Chaudhary Birendra Singh and Rao Inderjit Singh left the Congress to join the BJP; both are central ministers now.

In 2015, ahead of assembly election this year, Himanta Biswa Sharma quit the Congress with a group of party MLAs to join the BJP. Today in both Haryana and Assam there are BJP-led governments. And recently, Vijaya Bahuguna and nine other MLAs left the Congress for the BJP in Uttarakhand: though the Congress won back power after a spell of President’s rule by winning a court mandated floor test, all eyes are now on how the party fares in next year’s state election there.

There is a tendency for entrenched congressmen around the party President Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi to see every crisis as a self-serving opportunity to embed themselves as advice-givers. To talk how the party should be organized and how exactly each crisis may be the moment to hasten Rahul’s succession or, alternatively, to put it on hold.

The Gandhi family’s succession is an important issue the congress grapples with its own peculiar way, but there is no evidence of the party rectifying its internal organization to fix the lines of communication and accountability between the high command and the state units. (IPA Service)