Despite its drubbing, Congress remains the second largest party in the Indian Parliament; with its allies, it controls 91 seats. The party itself, however, will not stake a claim for the position of the leader of the opposition after falling three short of the required 55 seats.

Party leaders were hoping Gandhi would take over as the president of the Congress Parliamentary Party leader on June 1, but he stood by as his mother Sonia Gandhi was re-elected.

Senior Congress leaders, while publicly requesting the Congress president stay on, have mooted multiple transition models. But almost all of them require Gandhi to remain as leader for the foreseeable future, during which senior leaders hope to either change his mind or prepare various amendments to the party’s Constitution to reflect its change in leadership style.

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One such amendment would be required to execute the reported plan to form a panel of leaders to run the party. Such a shift away from the supremacy of the president would reflect the Congress’ good electoral performance in South India and Punjab, leaders from which would merit inclusion on the panel.

K.C. Venugopal from Kerala state, who rose to the crucial general secretary role under Gandhi, is among the few who have had consistent access to the Congress president since the election results were declared, and is likely to perform a central role if the plan came to fruition.

Another solution discussed in private has been to appoint a working president, thus freeing up Gandhi to return to his passion of attempting to build the party from the grass roots to counter the influence of the Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the spiritual parent to Modi’s BJP.

However, memories of the only time the Congress had a working president are cause for worry: Kamalapati Tripathi, appointed by Indira Gandhi in 1983, would often make life difficult for her son and successor Rajiv Gandhi through his various interventions on how the party should be run.

“This arrangement is not very good. The working president cannot remain secondary – that person might exercise the powers of the president itself,” said Zoya Hasan, former professor of history at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and author of Congress After Indira (1984-2009).

There have also been reports that Gandhi prefers that his successor comes from one of the middle and lower castes or tribes. This is a reflection of the Congress’ erosion of support among the upper castes and their consequent consolidation behind the BJP’s banner.

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Gandhi, whose tenure has seen the largest representation of the Nehru-Gandhi family in Congress’ leadership – his mother and sister currently occupy decision-making roles – has instructed that his successor should not be from the family. “Don’t drag my sister into it,” Gandhi reportedly said, when the name of Priyanka Gandhi was suggested.

But India’s grand old party may also not be ready for a president from outside that dynasty. Of the 18 individuals who have been Congress presidents since India’s independence in 1947, five have been from the Nehru-Gandhi family. However, in the 34 years since Rahul Gandhi’s father Rajiv took charge, there have been only two non-family party presidents, for a total of six years.

Hasan said while the choice of Sitaram Kesri as the party’s leader “did not work”, her predecessor P.V. Narasimha Rao had limited success as he simultaneously held the positions of India’s prime minister and party president.

“He wasn’t very successful,” Hasan said, pointing out Rao’s “absurd and farcical” decisions such as calling for internal party elections, only to force those who won positions to resign and be nominated so as to diminish the support they had garnered and ensure their dependency on the party’s president.

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In a piece published in India’s The Telegraph newspaper, Lalu Prasad – who leads the Rashtriya Janata Dal party, a long-term Congress ally, and is currently imprisoned on corruption charges – told his biographer: “The moment someone else beyond the Gandhi-Nehru family replaces Rahul, the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah [the BJP president] brigade will paint the new leader as a ‘puppet’ remote-controlled by Rahul and Sonia Gandhi. This will play on till the next general election. Why should Rahul give such an opportunity to his political detractors?”

While Congress struggles to set its house in order, its governments in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh – formed in 2018, handing Rahul Gandhi his most significant electoral successes since 2014 – are in trouble.

Congress failed to win even one of Rajasthan’s 25 seats while it won only one of Madhya Pradesh’s 29. The Chief Ministers of both states were thought to be among his targets when Gandhi criticised unnamed senior leaders of working primarily to ensure their children’s victories.

A generational clash has been playing out in Rajasthan between chief minister Ashok Gehlot, 68, and his deputy Sachin Pilot, 41. Both travelled to Delhi in the past week to discuss the ongoing crisis, but were denied access to the Congress president.

The Madhya Pradesh government is propped up with the support of independent legislators and smaller parties. “You never know whether the Madhya Pradesh government will fall. But we are not engineering any defections [to topple it]. At the moment, we are not asking for a floor test [to prove majority],” said BJP vice-president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe.

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Congress cannot afford to take too long to decide its future, either. Later this year, the states of Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Haryana as well as Jammu and Kashmir – where the BJP came to be part of the state government in 2015 – will go to the polls.

A generational clash is not new for Congress. When Rahul Gandhi’s father Rajiv was 40, he had to deal with an older generation of leaders nurtured by his own mother when he took charge of the government and then the party after her assassination in 1984.

However, the presence of a formidable BJP makes this ongoing struggle existential.

“The Congress is in deep crisis; it is really a crisis for survival now,” said Hasan, the former history professor. “There is such a strong ruling party which will stop at nothing to reduce the opposition further than it has already been reduced. The BJP has no tolerance for opposition.”