Today, we are seeing India’s Leader of the Opposition courting arrest in favour of one of the ‘fairy tales’ that he regularly cooks up to demoralise the nation. I have watched in rising dismay as Rahul Gandhi and some members of his club have raised a diatribe against not just the government, but also the courts, the economy, and the armed forces. Nothing and no one has been spared in the past two weeks by their radical rhetoric.
At a time when the country is reeling under an onslaught of attacks, both virtual and economic, should the Opposition stand by it or bring it down further?
Were there even a shred of truth in the serious allegations raised by the Gandhi scions against the Election Commission (EC), the Supreme Court and the armed forces, their attack would be justified. But at the time when the nation must stand united against the many adversaries lining up to extract their pound of flesh, the LoP is turning the nation’s attention away from serious issues.
Voter list controversy
The latest controversy was created by Gandhi in a press conference on 7 August, in which he levelled serious allegations against the EC of conspiring with the BJP to rig the Lok Sabha elections in 2024. He said that a house in Mahadevpura had 80 voters registered to it. A report by ThePrint on this house, however, did not reveal any fancy conspiracy by the BJP-EC nexus to defraud democracy.
“There are 6.5 lakh votes in the Mahadevpura Assembly segment, out of which 1,00,250 votes were stolen. This implies that 1 out of every 6 votes was stolen,” Gandhi said in Bengaluru.
The report revealed that House no 35 was a rental home near the IT Parks, which saw migrant workers come and go as renters. Many of the ‘voters’ were found to have moved to homes nearby without changing their addresses. There is no evidence to prove that all 70 of those registered at the address had voted in the election.
The allegation about EPIC Number FPP6437040 of a certain Aditya Srivastava appearing in voter lists of Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh also met a similar fate. UP chief electoral officer, Navdeep Rinwa, refuted these claims, adding that the number appeared only in the Bengaluru urban Assembly seat 174 (Mahadevpura).
Also read: Seven reasons why Rahul Gandhi’s voter fraud claim must be taken with a pinch of salt
Echoing Trump on ‘dead’ Indian economy
On 30 July, Donald Trump imposed a 25 per cent tariff on Indian goods and declared the Indian economy ‘dead’. Bedlam ensued on the Indian stock markets, while Gandhi stood outside Parliament and smirked.
“Everybody knows this except PM Modi and the Finance Minister. It is a dead economy. I am glad that the US President has stated facts… The entire world knows that BJP has ended the Indian economy to help Adani,” he said.
RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra has strongly refuted Trump’s claim, which Gandhi supported. “We are contributing about 18%, which is more than the US where the contribution is expected to be much less – about 11% or something. We are doing very well and we will continue to improve further,” Malhotra said.
Numbers shared by the IMF further endorse the view that the Indian economy is far from ‘dead’. The IMF’s July 2025 World Economic Outlook projects India to grow 6.4 per cent in both 2025 and 2026, keeping it at the forefront of global growth. In 2024, India’s GDP growth is estimated to be around 6.5 per cent. And this strength is despite the expected slump in global output, which will slow to 3.0 per cent in 2025.
This data shows that India pips China at the post, whose 5 per cent growth in 2024 is expected to slow to 4.2 per cent in 2026. Yet, both asian giants will remain miles ahead of the US, which is at 2.8 per cent in 2024 and will likely slip to 1.9 per cent in 2025. What do you have to say about this, Rahul Gandhi?
Chinese occupation of Indian territory
During his ‘Bharat Todo Yatra’ in 2022, Gandhi made a statement suggesting that China had occupied 2,000 sq km of Indian territory. However, the consequences came to bite him just last week. The Supreme Court rebuked him while staying a defamation case against the LoP on 5 August.
“How did you know about 2,000 km being annexed by the Chinese? If you’re a true Indian, you wouldn’t say it,” the court said.
It then schooled Gandhi on the Parliament being the correct platform to bring up his concerns rather than social media forums.
It should be noted that another member of his family, first-time MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, had the audacity to mock the jurisdiction of the honourable Supreme Court. “With due respect to the honourable judges of the Supreme Court, they do not decide who a true Indian is,” she said.
Also read: India’s problem isn’t Trump—underperforming economy made us easy to bully
Pakistani line on Operation Sindoor
Since the launch of Operation Sindoor, Rahul Gandhi has echoed the Pakistani line by haranguing the Indian government. He did this first by claiming that India had lost jets, then encouraged Mallikarjun Kharge to claim that Operation Sindoor was a “small war”, and finally by declaring in the monsoon session of Parliament that the hands of the forces were tied by the BJP government.
“If you want to fight, then go all out and defeat them once and for all… We cannot afford a PM who doesn’t have courage to use army the way it has to be used… We need a PM who frees the Army, the Air Force, like Indira Gandhi did,” he said.
These lies have been exposed by Air Chief Marshal AP Singh. In a press conference, Singh said that one of the reasons for the success of Operation Sindoor was the political will and the free hand given to the armed forces.
Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi’s statement also refutes Gandhi’s claims. Dwivedi said that defence minister Rajnath Singh sat down with the chiefs of the armed forces and exclaimed that enough was enough.
“All three chiefs were very clear that something had to be done. A free hand was given: ‘You decide what is to be done.’ That is the kind of confidence, political direction, and political clarity we saw for the first time. That is what raises your morale. That is how it helped our army commanders-in-chief to be on the ground and act as per their wisdom,” he said at IIT Madras.
It is unfortunate that the Gandhi family, led by the LoP, have neither the political will nor the ethics to support their own country during the time of crisis. It may be recalled that while India was reeling with the shock of the Pahalgam attack, none of the Gandhis outright condemned it as a heinous attack on Indian Democracy. Instead, Rahul Gandhi’s first post on X merely called the attack “heartbreaking” and used it as an opportunity to engage in government-bashing.
“Instead of making hollow claims on the situation being normal in J&K, the government should now take accountability and take concrete steps, so such barbaric incidents do not happen in the future, and innocent Indians do not lose their lives like this,” he wrote. I have also not found any post from Priyanka Gandhi Vadra condemning the attack.
There was no bag carried to Parliament stating “We stand with Pahalgam,” nor any open condemnation of Pakistan. The people of the country waited in vain for the Gandhis to ‘wear their hearts on their sleeves’ in defence of the victims of the dastardly Pahalgam attack. Rather, we find the Gandhi siblings speaking the language of Pakistan in Parliament.
With well-wishers such as these, who needs enemies? Why this adversarial approach to national interests? Why can’t we all stand together for once and speak the language of Bharat? Or will that make for bad politics?
Meenakashi Lekhi is a BJP leader, lawyer and social activist. Her X handle is @M_Lekhi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)