You are imposing your own urban middle class values on to the politics. The idea that congress somehow 'toyed' with org stracture is a weird statement. Even the BJP is like that. Tell me if Gandhi name was so anathema to BJP, why did they take in Maneka Gandhi and her Idiotic son into their fold? She would have never become a minister if she didn't have the Gandhi name. And as for '2 centres'- the congress was never as divided in power centres as BJP is. There is Modi and there is RSS, no matter what other people say, Modi is a complete puppet in their hands. They can make him walk the plank today if they want to.
And your contention that Chidambaram was not one of the front runners is wrong. Clearly there were only 2 people in the fray. Chidu was supported by MMS as his successor and he had managed to hold both Finance and Home Minister positions. ANtony on the other hand had grass roots support and an extremely honest reputation. Not that I don't like honesty, but the nereaucratic type of honesty that Antony showed put me off him.
And dude, stop 'sir-ing' me man. I feel really weird.
UPA 2 became corrupt after coming to power. Modi took 1000s of crores from the likes of ADani, Ambani etc. before he came to power. That's the difference.