EGN NEWS DESK
Just final yr, Rahul Gandhi and the once-powerful party he led, the Indian National Congress, gave the impression to be on the ropes and little menace to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s consolidation of political energy.
Congress had not been a aggressive think about nationwide elections in years, profitable fewer and fewer votes every time Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party was elected. And Mr. Gandhi himself had been convicted on a slander cost and barred from holding a seat in Parliament.
But on Tuesday, Mr. Gandhi and a broad opposition coalition led by his Congress party registered a far stronger exhibiting than anticipated in India’s elections, setting the stage for an unlikely comeback.
“He has lastly arrived,” mentioned Rasheed Kidwai, a fellow on the Observer Research Foundation, a assume tank in New Delhi. “This time he has improved his vote share by a minimum of 17 million votes, which may be very substantial.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Modi’s party introduced that it had reached an settlement to kind a governing coalition, together with two events that don’t essentially share its imaginative and prescient. Congress received 99 seats within the 543-seat Parliament, a acquire of 47 seats, and the alliance of which it’s the main half received a complete of 232.
Congress and its alliance of over two dozen political teams have offered the outcomes as a “ethical victory” over a B.J.P. authorities that they are saying was attempting to vary the nation’s Constitution and have portrayed as anathema to India’s identification as a multifaith and secular nation.
“The struggle was to save lots of the Constitution,” Mr. Gandhi, the son, grandson and great-grandson of Congress prime ministers, mentioned because the outcomes poured in.
The first main signal that Congress would possibly have the ability to contend got here in May 2023, simply a few months after Mr. Gandhi’s conviction for slander, when his party received the state authorities of Karnataka, within the south of India, from the B.J.P.
The carry was non permanent; Congress quickly misplaced energy in three states it ruled to the B.J.P.
But on the similar time, political specialists say, Mr. Gandhi was pushing for adjustments inside the party, India’s oldest, which had lengthy resisted overhauling an archaic organizational construction that saved its high leaders remoted from the grass-roots staff who ship votes.
Feelings that Congress’s leaders had been corrupt and out of contact resulted in a string of defeats over quite a lot of years after which degenerated into messy infighting inside the party.
For the previous two years, party members say, Mr. Gandhi has tried to reverse the decline of Congress by surrounding himself with younger coverage analysts to assist him perceive the challenges going through India, in addition to party veterans with their ears to the bottom in cities and villages that Congress was concentrating on. The party has as well as improved its social media recreation, trumpeting its messages on platforms like WhatsApp and YouTube.
Mr. Gandhi additionally raised his profile by embarking on two walks throughout India — assembly farmers of their fields and vegetable sellers on metropolis streets; and ingesting tea with current graduates and gig staff — in an effort to point out widespread trigger with abnormal individuals.
Perhaps most necessary, Congress targeted on a technique of reaching out to and cooperating with key regional gamers throughout the nation whose affect had dimmed underneath B.J.P. rule.
Congress leaders made a sequence of “seat-sharing” agreements with regional leaders, massive and small, that strengthened the alliance in opposition to Mr. Modi’s party. To keep away from splitting the anti-B.J.P. vote, Congress had its personal candidates contest fewer seats. And Mr. Gandhi campaigned vigorously alongside the leaders of like-minded political teams throughout India.
Throughout the marketing campaign, Mr. Gandhi additionally received help, party leaders say, by characterizing Mr. Modi as a pacesetter who would destroy India’s secular character.
“It is a victory not only for him and our alliance companions however for the thousands and thousands of poor Indians who voted to guard the secular material of this nation,” mentioned Srinivas B.V., one other Congress chief, about Mr. Gandhi. “People confirmed Modi: ‘You aren’t God, and you’ll get replaced.’”
Since being voted to energy in 2014, Mr. Modi has sought to place Hinduism, the faith of some 80 % of Indians, on the middle of the nation’s official identification. He additionally promised to finish corruption, overhaul the economic system and assist India change into a “developed nation” by 2047. But after his re-election in 2019, he leaned into Hindu themes to a higher extent.
Mr. Gandhi’s efforts to distinction his imaginative and prescient for India with Mr. Modi’s largely paid off, analysts say, even when some members of his party jumped ship and sided with the B.J.P.
Many of the politicians who defected from Congress to the B.J.P. misplaced their seats, together with in West Bengal and Maharashtra, the place Congress and its companions did particularly properly.
Throughout the marketing campaign Mr. Gandhi persistently linked Mr. Modi with Gautam Adani, Asia’s richest man, saying the prime minister was working for his tycoon pals, not for the overwhelming majority of Indians who’re poor. As if to vindicate this line of assault, over the 2 days after the election outcomes had been introduced, the worth of Mr. Adani’s flagship inventory fell by 14 %. (It then recovered considerably on Wednesday.)
“People straight correlate Adani Ji with Modi Ji — straight,” Mr. Gandhi advised reporters after the outcomes, utilizing Hindi honorifics for the 2 males.
Researchers who traveled throughout India throughout the voting mentioned Mr. Gandhi had crushed Mr. Modi on his personal turf in lots of locations by specializing in points just like the thousands and thousands of Indians with out jobs and the financial difficulties confronted by farmers. He additionally accused the B.J.P. of governance failures and labored with native political teams preventing for social justice and for the empowerment of lower-caste Indians.
Uttar Pradesh, the place Mr. Modi made dozens of visits to marketing campaign for native candidates, is one state the place the altering fortunes of the 2 largest political groupings was evident.
The state is India’s largest, and accounts for 80 of the Parliament’s 543 seats. The B.J.P. recorded its worst efficiency there since 2009, partially as a result of Mr. Gandhi was capable of craft an alliance with a robust native chief, Akhilesh Yadav.
In addition to the 37 seats picked up by Mr. Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, Congress received six, helped by aggressive campaigning by Mr. Gandhi’s sister, Priyanka Vadra, who helped defeat a former soap-opera actress who had served as a minister in Mr. Modi’s authorities. The B.J.P. received 33 seats, down from 62 within the earlier Parliament.
The election outcomes introduced on Wednesday have given a serious carry to tons of of hundreds of Congress staff throughout the nation, who had been rising uninterested in the inner infighting that has plagued their party for years.
Outside Congress headquarters in New Delhi, Bansi Lal Meena, a veteran Congress member from the state of Rajasthan, was exultant about his party’s efficiency.
“In villages and on the bottom, the B.J.P. unfold lies for years in opposition to us — saying that we’re anti-Hindu,” he mentioned. “They used my faith as a weapon in opposition to me to win votes.”
He added: “We will present them now as a result of our persons are additionally in Parliament.”
