Regardless of how the internecine feud within the Congress government in Rajasthan ends, it is unlikely that India’s main opposition party will stop imploding unless it settles its national leadership issue. For a year, there has been a leadership vacuum in the Congress. For sure, Sonia Gandhi is in formal charge of the party. However, it is clear that she is not really in charge of it for a variety of reasons, including ill health.
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Consequently, state units that sometimes defied odds to win assembly elections less than two years ago are falling apart. If it was Madhya Pradesh a couple of months ago, it is the Rajasthan unit that is teetering.
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Dissent and frustration within a state unit are not unusual in Indian politics as the signals from the Madhya Pradesh BJP show. When a central leadership is unable to play the role of an honest broker to defuse the tensions, a fracture in the state unit is almost inevitable. Therefore, unless the Congress gets its central leadership act together, it may fracture into regional outfits.
