Reacting to the Congress debacle in the recently concluded assembly polls in five states, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said that the party’s presence was “systematically going down in some states” and this was a “much larger issue”. Tharoor said, “The polarisation politics of BJP conversely drove others to vote for one party (in UP) which was SP. Congress per se cannot be faulted on grounds of one person’s campaigning. The issue for the party is larger.”