Infighting in the Congress has claimed its latest victim – TNCC chief EVKS Elangovan who was appointed over two years ago. The Congress leader was under siege from his own partymen accusing him of favoritism and wrong doings from selection of candidates to ignoring senior leaders in party affairs.

Mission remove Elangovan is nearly one year old and the Congress politicians once again proved that it pays to be persistent – you can achieve your goals if you are determined and focused.

In November last year, a concerted campaign to remove Elangovan took shape and it played out in Delhi, party headquarters with senior leaders including former union finance minister P Chidambaram seeking the ouster of the TNCC chief for an assortment of reasons.

At that time, even AICC vice president Rahul Gandhi and party supremo Sonia Gandhi ruled out any change in TN party leadership so close to the elections and continued with Elangovan, who led the party in the recently concluded assembly elections, in which the Congress performance was abysmal. Out of the total 41 the Congress contested it could just win eight seats, up from five it had won in 2011 when the alliance was routed. While the DMK increased its members four fold, bust still falling short of the magic numbers by a big margin, thanks largely to the poor performance of the Congress whose strike rate in converting seats it contested into wins was pretty poor.

Accepting moral responsibility for the party’s poor showing elections in Tamil Nadu, state unit chief EVKS Elangovan resigned from the post on Saturday.

He has reportedly sent his resignation letter to the party chief Sonia Gandhi.

The faction ridden Congress party in the state was witnessing revolt against Elangovan and there were several complaints against him.

The pre-poll scenario was replete with instances of rebellion by those denied tickets, like Jyotimani in Karur, who alleged that the Congress chief had deliberately not tried to retain her seat for the party and had allowed it to be given to the DMK, the alliance partner.

She had even threatened to contest as a rebel candidate, but withdrew after the high command stepped in. She is a direct recruit into politics by Rahul Gandhi, who handpicked her from among a group of activists in Tamil Nadu.

Many Congress leaders, including three of its past state unit presidents had petitioned Sonia Gandhi against Elangovan that he was ignoring the state leaders. Now that the showing was poor, it gave a chance to his detractors to step up pressure and it worked. Elangovan had recently visited Delhi but could not get an audience with Sonia Gandhi.