New Delhi: There is an apocryphal story of a man rushing towards the palace when he heard that the king’s pet dog had died. Along the way, he got the news that the king had also passed away. Immediately, he retraced his steps. Quizzed on why he was turning back, he said that now there was no one before whom he needed to display his sorrow.

This is the tale a senior Congress leader recounted while reacting to reports that former Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma had expressed his apprehensions that an in-house caucus, with contacts in other parties, was trying to sideline the Gandhi family, particularly vice president Rahul Gandhi.

"It is Verma’s way of drawing the high command's attention to himself... He is known to make controversial statements to keep himself in the news," said the leader about the 73-year-old Kurmi strongman from Uttar Pradesh who had migrated from Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party to the Congress, and has been languishing in political wilderness after his and his party’s electoral debacle. To serve as a reminder, Verma’s list of controversies include his challenge to the Election Commission, inciting it to arrest him for trying to lure voters during the 2012 UP assembly elections with the promise of hiking quotas for Muslims and for his statement that high food prices benefit farmers.

Notwithstanding what the leader had to say about Verma, the fact remains that there are many in the Congress who dread the thought of vesting their political future in Rahul's hands alone, specially after the party’s wipeout in the Lok Sabha polls and in the earlier assembly polls. Congress president Sonia Gandhi seems to have sensed this. It is because of this perhaps that she had deliberately stepped up front to take the blame for the defeat on herself and thus shield Rahul from any direct or concerted assault—just in case there should be one---from within. In doing so, she also sent out the signal that she was around to steer the party and hold it together, much like she had done after she joined active politics in 1998 and led the Congress to victory in 2004 and 2009. Accordingly, post-debacle, she began interacting with leaders to identify the reasons for the humiliating defeat and to figure out how to get the party out of the abyss.

After her preliminary assessment, she handed over the task of fleshing it out, not to Rahul, but to former defence minister AK Antony. And it would not be surprising if his report—meant only for Sonia’s eyes---identifies an entire range of factors leading to the debacle. Barring one, of course---and that is, Rahul's uninspiring leadership which most party workers privately gripe about. While victories and defeats, even of the kind that the Congress has suffered, can be part of the life of any party, what adds to the demoralisation and helplessness in the ranks is the perception that the leader who is supposed to show them the light lacks the will, motivation or temperament to do so.

With the party still reeling from the impact of its disastrous defeat, even Congressmen who want to quit the party have nowhere to go since other than the BJP-NDA, the only other parties thathave performed well in the elections are regional outfits like the AIADMK, the Trinamool Congress and the Biju Janata Dal.

Most others, including those who had anything to do with the Grand Old Party either directly like the NCP or indirectly like the BSP or the SP, have been hammered in the elections. This has drastically limited the options of Congressmen—or UPA-wallahs---who want to escape the bleak future staring them in the face. Unloved and unwanted by other parties, they are just biding their time till the public anger against them becomes diluted.

Indeed, sources maintain, the antipathy towards the Congress is so strong that parties want to keep their distance from it. The AIADMK, the Trinamool and the BJD, in fact, are wary of sharing the same seating bay as the Congress in the Lok Sabha where seats are earmarked according to the party’s strength and affiliations. With only 44 members, the Congress fills up about half the portion meant for the opposition and non-NDA parties. The next in line after Sonia’s party are the AIADMK’s 37 MPs and the Trinamool’s 34 members. Both these parties have to face assembly elections in less than two years’ time and TV shots of them sitting in the same bay could create a wrong impression about their affiliations. Between them and the BJD, which is also equidistant from the BJP and the Congress, they are 91 MPs. Indeed, the reluctance to sit immediately alongside the Congress has held up the seating arrangement in the House.

The Congress may be in dire straits politically, but there is as yet no palpable sign of a section breaking away or of a split within the party, notwithstanding Verma’s warning to the party leadership about the shenanigans of a caucus. With most of its senior leaders out of power -- they either lost or sat out the election -- there is no credible face within the organization who can lead such an assault. And those who may dare would also be aware that similar attempts in the past have failed although it is unlikely to deter them should they venture on this path.

However, no one in the party is ruling out the possibility of some members quitting the ranks to contest the assembly elections that are expected to take place in a few weeks from now in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir. And if their luck holds out, they may even be welcomed by the BJP, Shiv Sena and others who may not have strong candidates of their own in certain pockets.

This is not to say that there have been no sniper attacks on the Congress leadership. It began with one of Rahul’s close associates Milind Deora blaming the former’s advisers for the debacle and the leadership for following that advice. A Congressman from Kerala and another from Rajasthan had slammed Rahul as a "joker." And on Sunday, former MP Gufram Azam accused the Amethi MP of destroying the 129 year old party. "Rahul thought Youth Congress is a lab and did experiments and destroyed it," ANI quoted him saying.

Azam may be a spent force, a has-been in the Congress, but he has articulated a feeling that runs deep among members who believe that instead of building on the party’s strength and plugging its loopholes, Rahul’s experiment of democraticising and broadbasing the frontal organizations has further weakened the party. Even his hyped up primaries for selecting Lok Sabha candidates were a failure.

And now there is a bigger challenge: to pull the Congress out from the depths.

The Congress vice president has not shown either before or after the debacle that he has it in him to do it. Unlike Sonia, whose renunciation of the prime minister's post in 2004, had enhanced her stature, Rahul's refusal to lead the party in the Lok Sabha has only deepened the impression that he shirks responsibilities. Even his professed intent to recast the organisation appears shallow and flawed since he could have led from the front in Parliament and used the forum to rebuild the party and reconstruct its shattered image and appeal.

Indeed, on hindsight it would seem that the 44-member Congress---which is now pressurizing Speaker Sumitra Mahajan for the post of leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha--- was perhaps aware that it would be difficult for it to get that post as it falls short by 11 MPs to meet the 10 percent benchmark. The Congress wanted to spare Rahul the ignominy of leading the party without holding a formally recognised position of leader of opposition which is of cabinet rank.

Even though Sonia has deliberately chosen to be more visible post-election to protect Rahul and keep the party together, the Amethi MP still calls the shots. His latest decision is to once again entrust general secretary in charge of central election committee Madhusudan Mistry with the task of overseeing the selection of candidates for the assembly polls in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and J&K.

Mistry had been given this job for the Lok Sabha polls but could not, like his mentor, establish any connect either with party workers or with the voters. Indeed, he lost to Modi in Vadodara and failed to provide any contest to BJP’s Amit Shah in the battle for the 80 parliamentary seats in Uttar Pradesh, the state he was in charge of. The Congress could win only Sonia and Rahul’s Rae Bareli and Amethi seats, with the Congress vice president having to sweat it out this time.

Notwithstanding all this, even those who think that their future is bleak with Rahul believe that it would be even worse without a Gandhi spearheading their political battles. "The Gandhi name is a cementing factor. Without the Gandhis there will be a free-for-all in the Congress and the party will disintegrate completely,'' said a leader.

Indeed, post-debacle when both Rahul and Sonia offered to step down from their posts, senior leader Shakeel Ahmed protested, pointing out such a move would only lead up to a “Congress mukht Bharat’’ that Modi has been using as a slogan in the elections. The duo stayed on. So did the sentiment that has been governing the functioning of the party and its members--- that the Congress is Gandhis and the Gandhis are the Congress and the two together spell India or Bharat. This is the theorem most Congress leaders live by and hope to live by--- never mind the election results. Anything else is far too complicated and calls for hard work.