After Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991 and Sonia Gandhi refused to become Prime Minister , the party settled on the choice of P. V. Narasimha Rao who became leader and subsequently Prime Minister . Over the next few years , however , the Congress fortunes continued to dwindle and it lost the 1996 elections . Several senior leaders such as Madhavrao Sindhia , Rajesh Pilot , Narayan Dutt Tiwari , Arjun Singh , Mamata Banerjee , G. K. Moopanar , P. Chidambaram and Jayanthi Natarajan were in open revolt against incumbent President Sitaram Kesri and many of whom quit the party , splitting the Congress into many factions
was assassinated in 1991
Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi
Sonia Gandhi