Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah had promised a Congress-mukt Bharat, an India without Congress, and Saturday’s election results in Uttar Pradesh are a substantial step towards this. India’s biggest state, the one that formed the core of the party and gave it most of its prime ministers, now has only seven Congress members in its Assembly. But outside UP the project has been dealt a slight blow, as Congress returns to power in Punjab and ended up the largest party in both Manipur and Goa.

But the headline number is still the Congress and its Vice President Rahul Gandhi’s miserable performance in Uttar Pradesh. For the very first time, the party is down to single digits. As if to drive the matter home, the Congress has won fewer seats in the UP Assembly – just seven – than Apna Dal (Soneylal), a small alliance partner of the BJP’s, which picked up nine seats.

It is not as if the Congress was expected to come anywhere close to the BJP’s performance. Indeed, the party was only contesting 100 seats, as the junior partner in an alliance with the incumbent Samajwadi Party. And the last two decades have been years of low expectations for the Congress in UP, ever since the start of the 1990s and the emergence of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the SP. But even by those low standards, a final tally of 7 is shocking.

That said, the Congress’s slow lurch towards obsolescence seems to have been halted by results elsewhere on Saturday. In Uttarakhand, the Congress was reduced to just 11 seats in the 70-strong Assembly that is now controlled by the BJP, which won 57 seats.

But the Congress also pulled off a large victory in Punjab, the first win it has had in a major state since 2013. And it won by beating the incumbent Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP alliance, getting 77 seats to the SAD-BJP’s 18, while also fending off debutant Aam Aadmi Party.

Elsewhere, in Goa and Manipur, the Congress also ended as the single largest party. It won 17 seats in Goa, compared to 13 for the BJP. And it managed 28 seats in Manipur, putting it ahead of the BJP’s 21. In both states, it was short of a majority, and there were good chances that the smaller parties might prefer allying with the BJP, because of the power offered at the Centre, but coming in first place is still significant for the Congress, which could have easily stared at a complete blank.

The brief respite from the onslaught however doesn’t make the road ahead any easier for the Congress. The next few major elections including Gujarat, Rajasthan and Karnataka, in all of which it will be in a straight fight with the BJP, which will be flying high after its Uttar Pradesh victory. And the ignominy of being reduced to just seven seats will make it even harder for the Congress to claim that it should anchor a coalition to fight the BJP in 2019’s general elections. The Congress-mukt Bharat project may have been halted, but it is only stuck in neutral.