Senior leader Jyotiraditya Scindia's resignation has dealt a severe blow to the Congress and once again underlined the frustration within the party over the top leadership's indecisiveness and status quoist approach.

The decision on naming the new Congress president in Madhya Pradesh has been pending for more than a year after Kamal Nath became the chief minister in December 2018.

Nath, who is currently holding both the posts, had also met Congress president Sonia Gandhi a few times on the issue but the decision remained elusive.

The crisis has percolated from the top.

Soon after its hammering in the national elections last year, the grand old party plunged into deep leadership crisis when its former president Rahul Gandhi resigned from the post on May 25 at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC).

Watch | Jyotiraditya Scindia resigns from Congress, likely to join the BJP

For over two months, the party was in a state of confusion with Rahul Gandhi's refusal to take back his resignation. It was only on August 10, when the CWC once again turned to the party's longest ever chief Sonia Gandhi for taking it out of the crisis.

But the status quo continues to prevail.

Madhya Pradesh is not the only state where indecisiveness has impacted the functioning of the Congress.

In Karnataka, current state unit chief Dinesh Gundu Rao had submitted his resignation to the Congress high command, taking moral responsibility for the party's poor show in the bye-elections last December. Former chief minister Siddaramaiah had also stepped down as the Congress legislature party (CLP) leader.

After a series of discussions, the central leadership had almost finalised former minister and key troubleshooter DK Shivakumar as the new Karnataka unit chief. But the decision has been put on hold as Siddaramaiah favours Lingayat leader MB Patil for the post. The Congress high command is still grappling with the choices.

Similarly in Punjab, the central leadership has failed to resolve the differences between chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh and his former cabinet colleague Navjot Singh Sidhu.

In the last week of February after remaining incommunicado for months, Sidhu met Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to discuss his future role in the party.

The indecisiveness cost the Congress dear in Haryana where Ashok Tanwar was removed as the state unit chief barely few weeks before the assembly elections after remaining at the helm for six years. Senior leader Kumari Selja replaced him and the election management was handed over to former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda who brought the party within the striking distance of ousting the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from power.

In Maharashtra too, the Congress party's organisational structure, its fighting spirit and the election machinery were missing on the ground. The state leadership was in disarray with many of its senior leaders, including Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil and Harshwardhan Patil, defecting to the BJP and others such as Sanjay Nirupam refusing to campaign for the party.

This was also perhaps the first time since the two parties came together in 1999 that the Congress ceded the big brother role to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) whose chief Sharad Pawar led from the front against the BJP-Shiv Sena combine.

Not surprisingly, the Congress dropped to the fourth position in the Maharashtra assembly.

In Delhi, a rudderless Congress once again failed to open its account in the last month's assembly elections.

State chiefs of Telangana (Uttam Kumar Reddy) and Odisha (Niranjan Patnaik) resigned from their posts soon after the Lok Sabha elections but the party leadership is still struggling to find their replacements.

Congress-ruled Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh have not remained untouched by the intense infighting. All eyes would now be on the stability of the governments in these two states.

Scindia's exit has posed a tough challenge for the high command to take corrective steps and prevent the Congress from sinking further. The leadership has to give up the status quoist approach and move fast in terms of decision making.