the Congress as a political party now an accomplished fact in all the states which recently went to the polls, there remain but a few islands of Congress rule in the country: Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala in the south; and Assam and Meghalaya in the northeast The Congress had fared sufficiently poorly in the Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra as to have deserved the state assembly's dissolution; but even without such attention being bestowed upon it by the Union home minister, the ever-present internal squabbles in the party have sufficiently come to a head to cause a faction of the party other than the one which presided over the party's Lok Sabha disaster to come to power. But even this faction's days seem to be numbered; and though the party might not be immediately reduced to a minority when the anticipated departure of S B Chavan and his followers from the party takes place, it is unlikely the Congress can hold on to power in the state even till the elections.