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With the rout in the year-end assembly elections, Congress has been left looking at the bottom of the barrel ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, with Narendra Modi breathing down its neck.
It was all bouquets for Rahul Gandhi at the beginning of the year when he was made the Congress Vice President at the Jaipur Chintan Shivir but there is nothing much to show for him as 2013 comes to a close.
The party now has to decide whether to project him as its prime ministerial candidate when the AICC meets in more than a fortnight.
The debacle in Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh has thrown up questions over Rahul's ability to rally the party for a hat-trick in the parliamentary elections with his mother and party chief Sonia Gandhi virtually taking a backseat in the day-to-day affairs of the organisation.
While Rahul has now hinted changes beyond imagination in the party and its working, suggestions that Sonia Gandhi will again take the lead in the organisation have started gradually gaining ground with a do-or-die battle looming ahead.
An AICC restructuring is on the cards sooner than later and an AICC meeting is scheduled here on January 17 which is expected to give a glimpse of the party strategy for facing the Lok Sabha polls just a few months away.
Congress is in power as head of the UPA coalition for ten years since May 2004.
With several leaders rooting for him as the "natural choice" to lead the party in the polls, the meet is being held amid speculation that Rahul could be declared the prime ministerial candidate by the party.
Sonia Gandhi has said that the party would decide its PM candidate at an opportune time.
The year gone by also saw the party storming back to power in Karnataka after seven years in what was seen as an anti-BJP vote due to the controversial rule of B S Yeddyurappa marked by allegations graft and nepotism.
Congress succeeded in getting the Food Security Bill as also the Land Acquisition Bill passed in Parliament amid projections of the two schemes as the game changers for the organisation in the Lok Sabha polls.
At the fag end of the year, the ruling party also succeeded in getting the Lokpal Bill passed with the help of the main opposition BJP in the backdrop of both the major parties suffering a setback with the emergence of Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi.
