Senior Congress leaders have indicated that a new party chief would be announced soon although there is no consensus yet on who would be the replacement amid the continuing chorus for Rahul Gandhi to withdraw his resignation.

While Rahul has given no hint that he might reconsider his decision even once during interactions with the leaders, the party hopes he will eventually relent.

But almost every senior leader in the know of internal deliberations now talks with certainty that Rahul is not going to continue as president.

The tussle now is on the possible replacement although most party MPs, middle-rung leaders and ordinary workers see the option of change to be fraught with devastating consequences.

The foot soldiers of the party are the most worried and believe that the seniors didn’t do enough to force Rahul to rethink his decision to step down as party chief.

Some middle-rung leaders and Delhi workers started a sit-in at the party headquarters on Tuesday. While around a thousand had gathered in the morning, promising to start a hunger strike, the crowd had dwindled by the evening and barely 200 to 300 people were at the tent erected on the premises. Around a hundred more munched snacks in the canteen.

A few senior leaders and former legislators and ministers came to attend the sit-in for a while, but the ill-conceived attempt was a flop show compared with similar outpourings of emotions in the past.

One Delhi Congress worker even attempted suicide but it seemed more like a comical intervention.

While most in the party feel that Rahul’s exit will ruin the Congress and weaken the entire Opposition, some strategists argue that freeing him from managing organisational nitty-gritty for political campaign wasn’t a bad idea. They cite the example of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah to justify the proposal.

What is thus not open to dispute is that Rahul’s supremacy as the leader is not being challenged. “Whatever has to be done for the future will be done by the family alone,” a young leader explained to The Telegraph. “Our strength lies in Sonia-Rahul-Priyanka. Nobody is under the illusion that the new president has to become the supreme leader. The tussle is between two viewpoints; one that is focused on how to survive, the other how to revive.”

This leader added: “We have to rise from the ashes. We have to create a leadership structure that will steer the Congress over the next two-three decades. There is no point in giving the reins to a 70- or 80-year-old leader. That is the strategy to survive, to remain afloat. We want a complete overhaul. The leadership that controlled the party for the last 20-30 years should pave the way for the new. The new president should be able to work hard, to tour the country and launch a membership drive.”

The other viewpoint is that experience is critical to the strategy of revival and the mistake of handing over the reins of the party to greenhorns must be avoided.

While Rahul has accepted the need to strike a balance, he also feels that he didn’t get the full backing of senior leaders in the recent elections and is therefore not getting involved in the selection of the new president. The Congress Working Committee in consultation with Sonia Gandhi will have to take that decision.

Rahul is ready to campaign in elections and has asked leaders from Maharashtra, where Assembly polls are due later this year, to draw up a tour of drought-affected areas. But insiders believe he is being naïve as the vagaries of dual power centres will create more complications for him.

Sonia loyalists fully understand the power dynamics and hence the insistence on his continuance so far. But they seem to have given up now and are sewing up a workable plan, which will be announced sooner than later.