From 50 Years Ago: Continuous Crisis.

From one State after another, come disquieting reports of dissension, factionalism and rifts within the Congress party. These dissensions usually take the form of widening the breach between the legislative and the organisational or the party wing of the Congress. It is not these, however, which have come to the fore of late. The more recent dissensions are between the Congress Ministries in some of the States and the Congress legislative parties. The Congress High command, it is no longer a secret, had to intervene both in Orissa and in Mysore, and to persuade or compel the Congress party members in the legislatures to continue their support to the existing Congress Ministries.

Shri Hare Krishna Mehtab could keep his Ministry in power in Orissa, thanks to last minute intervention from the high-ups in the Congress party. In Mysore, the revolt of the majority of the Congress members of the legislature against the Ministry, which took the unusual form of a signature campaign against the Chief Minister and his Cabinet, had to be suppressed by the same unorthodox method. In Punjab, ministerial instability and factions within the Congress camp have gone on so long that they have almost come to be taken for granted. Factionalism in this State, however, is not, unfortunately, purely a domestic issue; it has been responsible for the growth of militant parochialism in the State, as also for the loss of prestige of the organisation. How infectious and corrupting these developments can be, was brought to light in the last election to the Delhi Corporation in which the Congress lost its majority and was relegated to a second place by the Jan Sangh.