Will Sonia Gandhi’s interim tenure as Congress president last a long, long time?

A year has elapsed since Sonia Gandhi stepped in as interim president after Congress went headless for over two months when Rahul Gandhi quit in a huff following the party’s Lok Sabha debacle. The two notable achievements of her term have been the reaffirmation of BS Hooda as Haryana’s Congress mainstay, which happened too late to stop the BJP juggernaut, and the firming of an alliance with JMM much ahead of the assembly elections that helped the two parties tap anti-incumbency against the former chief minister.

Sonia Gandhi to remain interim chief till ‘proper procedure’ for electing president is implemented: Congress

But everything else has gone downhill for the Congress during the momentous year. Sonia’s return has emboldened the old guard and left younger party apparatchiks rudderless. The party has ceded much ground in a key battleground state like Maharashtra, lost power in Madhya Pradesh after Jyotiraditya Scindia’s revolt and its Rajasthan government hangs by a thread after Sachin Pilot bolted with 18 other MLAs to Haryana. Party leaders are openly bickering over the future of the party and Sonia has shown no urgency in arresting the drift.

Rahul Gandhi remains the top choice to replace her but he compounds the confusion with his interventions at various party forums but showing no interest in thrashing out a roadmap to the presidential elections for the party. Shashi Tharoor has said the elections can help the Congress discover decisive leadership again. At the centre of the stalemate is the Gandhi family whose electoral clout and ability to keep Congress from imploding is waning. The sooner Congress can sort out its leadership woes, the sooner the country will benefit from the presence of a strong opposition party.