Rahul Gandhi has blamed forces within and outside the Congress for the fall of the government in Karnataka, acknowledging that several senior Congress leaders were uninterested in the survival of the coalition with the Janata Dal Secular.

“From its first day, the Cong-JDS alliance in Karnataka was a target for vested interests, both within & outside, who saw the alliance as a threat & an obstacle in their path to power,” Rahul, who is on a foreign tour, tweeted.

“Their greed won today. Democracy, honesty & the people of Karnataka lost.”

Rahul’s public admission of sabotage from within is being seen as consistent with his outburst in his resignation letter as party president, in which he hinted that some senior leaders had not cooperated with him.

“At times, I stood completely alone in the fight against the RSS-BJP and am extremely proud of it,” he had written.

He had added: “Rebuilding the party requires hard decisions and numerous people will have to be made accountable for the failure of 2019.”

Rahul’s latest comments, which underline how some Congress leaders in Karnataka were working at cross-purposes with one another, come at a time the central and state leaderships have been crying themselves hoarse about the “BJP’s destabilisation plot”.

Rahul may have been expressing his anguish at the Congress legislators who resigned and flew to Mumbai, but many in the party privately admit that former chief minister P.C. Siddaramaiah was fiercely opposed to the alliance with the JDS.

Also, a large section in the Congress had felt that allowing H.D. Kumaraswamy to be chief minister was an act of political suicide. These leaders became more restless after the general election drubbing.

Even now, some of them believe that the Congress would recover lost ground faster by going it alone in the state. They see the JDS as a liability and expect the high command to snap relations sooner than later.

Unlike Rahul, party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra appeared to be blaming the BJP alone.

“One day the BJP will discover that everything cannot be bought, everyone cannot be bullied and every lie is eventually exposed,” she tweeted.

“Until then I suppose, the citizens of our country will have to endure their unbridled corruption, the systematic dismantling of institutions that protect the people’s interests and the weakening of a democracy that took decades of toil and sacrifice to build.”

The BJP’s success in Karnataka has deepened the feeling in the Congress that the party owes its disarray mostly to the leadership crisis.

Many MPs stressed in informal conversations that Sonia Gandhi should take over the reins for some time to provide stability and stem the panic spreading among the ranks. Some of them insisted that the leadership vacuum had caused greater damage than the successive electoral routs.

Apprehensions have deepened about the imminent fall of the Congress government in Madhya Pradesh, where the party has 114 MLAs to the BJP’s 108. The Congress has forged a majority in the House of 230 with the support of four Independents, two BSP members and one from the Samajwadi Party.

A day after the success in Karnataka, Gopal Bhargava, leader of the Opposition in Madhya Pradesh, warned: “Hamare upar wale number 1 ya number 2 ka adesh hua toh chaubis ghante bhi apki sarkar nahi chalegi (If an order comes from our No. 1 or No. 2, your government won’t last 24 hours).”

BJP state president BS Yeddyurappa celebrates with party colleagues by cutting a cake in Bangalore after HD Kumaraswamy lost the vote of confidence in the Assembly on Tuesday (PTI)

Chief minister Kamal Nath was subdued in his response: “Your top No. 1 and No. 2 (Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah) are sensible; that is why they are not giving such orders. You are free to bring in a no-confidence motion.”

An agency report quoted Bhargava as saying the Madhya Pradesh coalition was “based not on any ideological compatibility or principles but on greed”.

“The day their demands are not met, the coalition will fall. I believe that the situation in Madhya Pradesh is much worse than that in Karnataka. It is a big surprise that the government has managed to stay in power for seven months.”Also under the scanner is the Rajasthan government, although the Congress is much better placed there with 112 MLAs in a House of 200.

Asked about a possible threat, chief minister Ashok Gehlot said: “The BJP can do it anywhere, using the power of money to topple any government. But the people are watching it. Time will tell them that this undemocratic strategy is counter-productive; there can be a revolt in their own party.”

He added: “Unfortunately, the central government is not worried about the serious problems in economy, unemployment and agriculture. They only want to grab power across the country.”