The Congress is in a deep-ditch bid to save the Himachal Pradesh government.

A day after suffering a shock defeat in the Rajya Sabha contest — high command nominee Abhishek Manu Singhvi lost against the run of play — the party was struggling to retain the only power toehold it has in the north.

Speculation about the extreme step of changing chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu to salvage the situation dominated the political discourse the whole day as central observers Bhupinder Singh Hooda and D.K. Shivakumar talked to the MLAs to finalise the way out of the crisis. The central observers’ main concern, however, appeared to be to ward off the immediate crisis and buy time on the pretext of the impending parliamentary elections.

While the Congress has swiftly moved to get the six legislators who voted against the party’s candidate in the Rajya Sabha poll disqualified, it managed the first challenge of passing the budget in the Assembly on Wednesday by suspending 15 BJP MLAs for creating a ruckus. If the finance bill had fallen through, the government may not have survived. But there is no threat of any non-confidence motion now as the Assembly has been adjourned sine die.

Though the defeat in the Rajya Sabha election was bad enough, the crisis was precipitated by the resignation of Vikramaditya Singh as a minister in the Sukhu government. Son of former chief minister Virbhadra Singh and MP Pratibha Singh, Vikramaditya grabbed the opportunity to corner Sukhu when he was the most vulnerable after the failure to ensure the victory of Singhvi.

Vikramaditya, who was not comfortable working under his late father’s critic, conveyed to the high command that he would not tolerate humiliation any more.

Vikramaditya said he was hurt because Sukhu had refused to allot land for a statue of his father, the tallest leader of the state. He also alleged that Sukhu always tried to suppress the voices of the legislators and that the “fiscal mismanagement” under him was known to all. “We won’t tolerate it if somebody conspires to wipe out our existence,” he declared.

The high command read the signals correctly and Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh declared in Delhi that the topmost priority was to save the government and that the party would not hesitate in taking extreme steps if needed.

Both the central observers — Hooda and Shivakumar — were sent to Shimla with clear instructions that the priority should be to save the government at any cost.

Hooda and Shivakumar achieved some instant success as Vikramaditya softened his stance by late evening, publicly saying that he would not mount pressure on the government anymore. He said: “I have not withdrawn my resignation but I won’t press for its acceptance till the observers complete this process.” His mother, Pratibha Singh, said: “Things were not proper in this government. We have conveyed our sentiment to the central observers. Let’s see what they do.”

Though the final word has not been spoken on this episode so far, it appears the central observers have given the Himachal leaders some concrete assurances and asked them to wait till the Lok Sabha elections. Sukhu, who appeared to be in trouble, might have survived the scare now but a clearer picture would emerge in a few days when the high command takes the final decision.

Laying the entire blame at the BJP’s doors, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said: “The BJP, using the power of the central government, money and agencies, tried to crush the people’s right to elect a government of their choice. The use of government machinery by the BJP in such operations is unprecedented in the country’s history. A party with a strength of 25 MLAs is challenging the majority of 43. It is clear they are depending on sale-purchase of MLAs. This attitude is amoral and unconstitutional. The BJP, which did not stand with the people in the time of natural calamity, is conspiring to push the state into political calamity.”

The BJP’s claim that the Congress government was in trouble because of its internal dissensions and it had no role to play in this may not sound credible because Sukhu himself said on Tuesday that the rebel Congress MLAs were escorted out of the state by Haryana police and the CRPF. The MLAs stayed in Panchkula in BJP-ruled Haryana instead of neighbouring Punjab, which is under AAP control.