Mar 23, 2026 14:42 pm IST

Opinion | 'Humiliation', 'Neglect': Congress's Quiet Unravelling As Leader After Leader Leaves

Since 2014, there have been 150 leaders of significance who have left the Grand Old Party. It indicates two vital flaws.

Rasheed Kidwai Rasheed Kidwai

Ahead of the April 9 Assembly elections, the Congress party received a severe jolt in Assam when Pradyut Bordoloi, its veteran leader and incumbent Member of Parliament from Nagaon, resigned from the party. Later, Bordoloi told the media that he was leaving after three decades with the Congress because he was feeling humiliated and isolated, insinuating that all was not well between him and Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president Gaurav Gogoi.

Bordoloi described how the party renominated an MLA who orchestrated an attack on him during the Panchayat elections in April 2025, but emphasised that his decision to quit was driven more by the humiliation and neglect he faced in the Congress than by ticket distribution or political opportunism.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who switched to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from the Congress in 2015, citing similar reasons, lost no time in welcoming Bordoloi into the BJP. "The Assam Pradesh BJP will recommend to the central leadership that he (Bordoloi) should fight the Assembly elections. There is no reason for someone with self-respect to stay with the Congress party. We aim to bring more Congress leaders into the party," Sarma said.

Not Just A Bordoloi Story

While the renomination of a tainted MLA may have triggered Bordoloi's resignation, discontent inside the Assam Congress has been hurting the party for the past several months. "When we inform Delhi of problems we face at the ground level, we get no response. They do not even respond to our emails," a Congress worker from Assam says. During conversations with state-level Congress leaders, words like '[lack of] self-respect', 'isolation', 'sidelined', and 'ignored' come up frequently.

This undercurrent, left unaddressed, has resulted in significant resignations. In May 2025, PCC spokesperson Bobbeeta Sharma resigned. This was followed by a bigger blow in February 2026, when Bhupen Borah, two-time MLA and the president of the state unit from 2021 until 2025, quit the party. Borah was regarded as the "indigenous Hindu face". Himanta Biswa Sarma was quick to move in, wasting no time to accommodate Borah into the state executive of the BJP.

A senior police official in Guwahati summed up the situation cogently. "Now, it will be a cakewalk for the BJP," adding that it is the Congress that has now become the BJP in Assam.

Same Plot, Different Characters

In West Bengal, it is a similar story - of neglect and isolation. The only silver lining being that there are fewer instances of desertion. Ironically, it is because neither the Trinamool Congress (TMC) nor the BJP can accommodate the Congress deserters. Battle-scarred party veterans are clearly upset at the High Command's decision to field candidates in all 294 seats. They argue that given the strong anti-incumbency sentiment against the TMC and the communal politics of the BJP, a secular alliance with the Communist Party of India Marxist (CPI-M) could perhaps break the TMC-BJP binary in West Bengal's politics.

However, given the Congress' electoral stake in Kerala, where it is pitted head-on against the CPI(M), an alliance in West Bengal would be mired in political contradictions, which the BJP would leverage. While there may be creative ways to resolve such contradictions, the prevailing mood within the Bengal Congress is that of frustration - frustration that local interests do not feature in the party's larger scheme of things.

Over in Odisha, things are not dissimilar, as Sofia Firdous, the state's first Muslim woman legislator, defied a party whip and cross-voted with two other Congress MLAs during the recent Rajya Sabha election. This led to the surprise victory of the BJP-backed independent candidate Dilip Ray, who defeated his Congress-Biju Janata Dal (BJD) backed rival. The Congress has expelled Firdous from the party and sought her disqualification from the Assembly under the anti-defection act.

But what made Sofia Firdous break ranks? Firdous has claimed that the Congress leadership did not consult their MLAs before deciding to support the BJD candidate. She argued that the BJD had historically acted as the "B-team" for the BJP and that aligning with them betrayed the struggle of Congress workers in Odisha. Her father, Mohammed Moquim, pointed out that Firdous was repeatedly sidelined within the party's decision-making processes.

New Mutation, Old Disease

It would be intellectually dishonest to pretend that the Congress has never split before. It split, repeatedly, in its moments of genuine crises. The 1969 split, triggered by Indira Gandhi's clash with the Syndicate following the 1967 electoral setback, was ideological and seismic. The post-Emergency collapse in 1977 spawned the Janata coalition. The Narasimha Rao era saw a rash of splinter formations - the Tiwari Congress, the Bangarappa Congress, the Scindia Congress (the original one, under Madhavrao). The Sitaram Kesri interregnum added more turbulence. And when Sonia Gandhi came to power, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) split away in 1999 over her foreign-origin, and YS Rajasekhara Reddy eventually walked Andhra Pradesh into the arms of a dynasty of its own making.

But those were proper ruptures - ideological contestations or regional power assertions with a clear political logic. What has happened since 2014 is qualitatively different. The lack of ideological underpinnings in the Congress, a so-called umbrella party for leaders from across the board, further causes defections. But today's departures are not ideological statements; they are not even principled disagreements in most cases. They are calculated career moves, timed to maximise electoral damage to the Congress and personal reward for the defector. Periodic defections, unlike one clean split, have a particularly insidious quality: they make a party bleed white, slowly, across years, with no single crisis dramatic enough to force systemic reform.

Since 2014, there have been 150 leaders of significance who have left the Grand Old Party. It indicates two vital flaws: lack of a transparent feedback system and absence of a fair reward-punishment mechanism. The traditional lobby-oriented mechanism in the Congress makes it all the more difficult to set up such structures overnight.

One-Way Conversations

After talking to state-level Congress workers, there appears to be a serious lacuna at the level of general secretaries who are in charge of respective states. The oft-repeated complaint is that at this level, the conversation has become one-way. The political managers in the Congress more often convey the High Command's decision to the state unit instead of the other way round.

To stem the rot, the Congress needs to develop a counter-strategy. While restoring internal mechanisms and cracking the whip of discipline are important and desirable moves, some sustainable efforts are required. "The door is open for people to leave" attitude has not helped. The Assam Congress old guards fondly remember former Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi's reconciliatory approach: you do not finish off your political opponent or competitors; you try to engage with them, bring them over to your side, and carry them along with you.

This is where Sonia and Priyanka Gandhi can play a pivotal role - as attentive listeners within the organisation, capable of hearing genuine grievances, addressing them with empathy, and guiding timely course correction.

Across India, countless Congress workers and supporters continue to wait for the party to reassert itself as a force for the future. For that to happen, the Congress must strike a delicate balance: building a modern, institutional framework while retaining a deeply human capacity for feedback, responsiveness, and engagement. Leaders like Mallikarjun Kharge, drawing on their experience and moral authority, can help shape a more hands-on culture within the party and, when needed, issue a persuasive call for "homecoming".

The bus, after all, is ready to move. What it needs now is not direction alone, but the shock absorbers to withstand the road ahead.

(Rasheed Kidwai is an author, columnist and conversation curator)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

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