Rahul Gandhi, in his new role as Leader Of the Opposition, may prove further detrimental to the BJP. In the last week, Rahul Gandhi has touched two vital nerves that have been unfavourable for the saffron party. The first was his meeting with the Railway loco pilots and the second was with the people of Manipur. Loco pilots have long been ignored by the BJP government and Rahul Gandhi’s meeting with them have exposed the vulnerability that the railways is facing. While these are political optics, the recently concluded Lok Sabha poll results showed that these tricks are working for the Congress, a party that has faced unprecedented challenges since 2014.
Congress bagged less than 60 seats in both the general elections of 2014 and 2019. However, realizing people’s disconnect with the Congress, Rahul Gandhi embarked on a daring ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ and ‘Nyay Yatra’ while regularly interacting with the section of people who drive the economy at the bottom level – farmers, carpenters, mechanics, and now loco pilots. Even political analyst Prashant Kishor had laughed off Rahul Gandhi’s photo-ops predicting that these won’t make much difference. However, the 2024 result was out of the syllabus question even for the exit pollsters. While the Congress secured just 99 seats, the almost 200% rise in the party’s seats can be credited to multiple factors including Rahul Gandhi’s ground outreach.
Ahead of the general elections, Rahul Gandhi met all those sections which are aggrieved and were protesting against the establishment – be it farmers or wrestlers or people from Manipur. The impact was very much visible in the Lok Sabha polls results where the Congress swept the Manipur elections snatching both seats from the NDA while it significantly dented the BJP’s prospects in states like Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan.
Since the Manipur crisis began a year ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not visited the state even once while Rahul visited the state and met people thrice. His visits may not have made much difference, but it certainly gave a message that Congress is with the people in times of crisis. His meetings with farmers or protesting wrestlers sent out a similar message to the concerned group and voters. In Haryana, the BJP lost five seats to Congress while in Rajasthan, it lost 11 and suffered a massive setback in Uttar Pradesh conceding 28 seats to the SP-Congress alliance.
The BJP’s internal reports have highlighted that its leaders’ disconnect with the public and party workers played a key role in bringing down the party’s tally below the majority mark. The BJP was earlier known as a party which always remains in election mode but it seems that Rahul Gandhi has now decided to remain in the election mode until Congress returns to power. From raising the NEET issue to visiting Assam and Manipur, Rahul Gandhi has shown that the road ahead is not smooth for the BJP.
On the other hand, most of the BJP leaders are yet to come out of the delusion and hit the ground. It’s high time that BJP leaders including Narendra Modi get down to the ground, meeting people and resolving their grievances, else the next elections might see a role reversal between the BJP and the Congress.
