Congress performed poorly and lost badly in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 and 2019, and the party is currently in the midst of a debate on the future enunciation of its core ideological plank of secularism, but the recent controversy over an advertisement on its 85th plenary session, which did not include any remembrance for India’s first education minister and freedom fighter Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, and the party received strong criticism from secularists.