It will need no extra efforts to read the mood of the Congress workers across the length and breadth of the country who took to the social media to wish their once-upon-a-time party chief Rahul Gandhi on his 51^st birthday on Saturday. They desperately want him to take charge, lead from the front and save the party from going deeper into the zone of political irrelevance. The recent debacles in the assembly elections of Bihar, West Bengal, Kerala and other states is yet another reminder to the Congress central leadership that a further deferment of election of its party chief will lead to ruin to the degree which may prove irreparable.

While a few leaders in the upper ranks of the Congress still nurture the feeling that Rahul is incapable of delivering the grave responsibility, they are only a few in numbers, whereas the message from the grassroots which is growing louder is of an intense longing for Rahul’s return. The current Congress leadership is not displaying the just seriousness to the fact that the party’s organizational base, which is the foundation on which any mass-based political outfit in a democracy like India survives and sustains is undergoing a silent and fast depreciation. Finding a precedent of the current doom will be difficult and it needs recapitulating that the 1977 drubbing at the hands of Janata party could be repaired within three years largely due to the fact that cadre-based organizational structure of the party was intact. This is absolutely missing now and unless Congress elects its President without wasting time, such decay will be impossible to check. July 3 next will mark two years when Rahul Gandhi, holding himself responsible for the defeat at the hands of the BJP in the 2019 general elections resigned. While this marked the beginning of the seemingly endless void within the Congress, it remains a fact that Rahul has continued to play the role of the de facto party chief and to the best of his abilities has thrown challenges to the BJP juggernaut on issues central to national and state-level politics. A queer tendency of blaming him alone for any ignominious defeat of the Congress in any election has invaded the pan-Indian political thought process and a sizeable part of the media, unfortunately, is involved.

However, it’s perhaps for the first time since 2014 there are clear signs that the BJP is not impregnable, the West Bengal assembly result has shown. 2024 general elections will be very different from the 2014 and 2019 editions and it will be hardly surprising if there are ‘tectonic shifts’ and sans the Congress it will be impossible. This is the time and Rahul must return as the Congress chief.