Brand Modi is diminishing. The Bharatiya Janata Party lost the only state, Jharkhand, where it projected Prime Minister Narendra Modi as its face. On the face of it, Congress leaders should be jubilant. After all, they have waited for this moment for a decade. But they aren’t. It’s sinking in them now that Brand Modi and Brand Rahul are not inversely linked. Even if the former is fast losing its sheen, it’s not boosting the Opposition leader’s brand value. His much-celebrated love-versus-hate narrative isn’t resonating even with the Muslims any more.
Reporting from Maharashtra, I had mentioned the 2024 Dhule Lok Sabha election that BJP strategists cited to me as an example of the so-called ‘vote jihad’. BJP candidate Subhash Bhamre had led in five out of six assembly segments, taking an overall lead of 1.90 lakh votes over his Congress rival. In the sixth assembly segment, Muslim-majority Malegaon Central, Bhamre trailed his Congress rival by 1.94 lakh votes and lost the Lok Sabha election by a little over 3,800 votes. Such instances lent credence to the general perception and narrative about the minorities rallying behind Rahul Gandhi.
Let’s look at the vote shares of different parties in the Malegaon Central seat in the assembly election now: Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM)—1,09,653; Indian Secular Largest Assembly of Maharashtra (ISLAM)-1,09,491; Samajwadi Party-9,624, and Congress-7,527. The Congress came fourth in an assembly seat that had catapulted its Lok Sabha candidate to victory in Dhule.
The first runner-up, Shaikh Rashid, was a former Congressman who founded ISLAM just a month before the polling. Just think of the Congress getting 1.94 lakh votes in the Lok Sabha election in Malegaon Central and just 7,527 in the assembly election six months later. In the by-poll in Assam’s Muslim-majority Samaguri constituency that the Congress had held since 2001, the BJP won.
In Uttar Pradesh’s Muslim-majority Kundarki assembly constituency, the Samajwadi Party, an INDIA constituent, lost the by-poll to the BJP. The SP denying a ticket to the influential Barq family, and the Congress-led Himachal Pradesh government sending IPS officer Ilma Afroz, who hails from Kundarki, on long leave, were cited among the factors that might have alienated the Muslims from the SP, a Congress ally.
One can always argue that these are assembly elections and by-elections, in which local factors dominate. As Congress leader Gurdeep Sappal pointed out, the party won the Nanded Lok Sabha by-poll but lost all six assembly seats in this parliamentary constituency.
Congress candidates got 4.27 lakh votes in the six assembly constituencies, but the party’s Lok Sabha candidate got 5.87 lakh votes. That’s another indicator of how the people in Maharashtra voted for the Mahayuti in this assembly election but a large section of them turned away from the BJP-led alliance when it came to voting to strengthen PM Modi’s hand at the Centre.
Brand Modi’s decline won’t help Congress
Congress sympathisers may cite a few more similar instances of Brand Modi’s decline. However, the Congress party’s electoral performance in the past decade hardly inspires confidence in Brand Rahul’s resilience. Addressing BJP workers at the party headquarters Saturday evening, PM Modi took a jibe at the Congress, calling it “parjeevi’ or a parasite who can’t win elections on its own. It must hurt Congress leaders’ pride but look at the facts.
How many Lok Sabha seats can the Congress win on its own in five states with the maximum number of seats—UP, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Bihar, Tamil Nadu? Not even in double digits if it contests alone. These states together account for 249 seats, almost half of the total 543 seats in the Lok Sabha. Add to it states like Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Odisha – with a total of 76 Lok Sabha seats- where the Congress has barely managed to open its account. No matter what post he held, Rahul Gandhi has run the party since he became Congress general secretary in 2007. The party’s footprints have only been shrinking. Seventeen years is a long time to bring a turnaround in the party’s fortune.
It would be unfair to blame Rahul Gandhi entirely for what has happened to the Congress. Many regional satraps have also presided over the decimation of the party in their respective states. He has led from the front, taking on his political adversaries to the best of his ability. As his supporters within the Congress say, his heart is in the right place and his commitment to fight for whatever he thinks is the right cause can’t be questioned. Be that as it may, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Also read: BJP is winning elections without Modi. Congress needs to change its strategy
Bat for Priyanka Gandhi
So, what are Rahul Gandhi’s options today? He must pass the baton. He doesn’t hold an organisational post and wouldn’t have to quit anything. He doesn’t have to change his political or ideological beliefs. He is an MP and he has to fight his fight. Expecting him or Sonia Gandhi to loosen their grip on the party and hand over the power to someone outside the family would be naïve. They didn’t even accept Mamata Banerjee’s and Arvind Kejriwal’s proposal to make Mallikarjun Kharge the INDIA bloc’s PM face in what looked like a lost cause in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Let’s be practical.
What Rahul Gandhi can, therefore, do is step back and bring sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to the front. Let her emerge as the party’s face till the 2029 Lok Sabha election, at least. Here are four reasons why he should do it.
First, Modi or no Modi, Rahul as the Congress face in the fourth consecutive Lok Sabha election can’t be a winning strategy. Sisyphus might have a better chance to roll the boulder up the hill.
Second, Priyanka has entered electoral politics at a time when female voters are shaping the outcome. Toilets, LPG cylinders, houses, free foodgrains, et al turned them into pillars of Modi’s political strength. See how they swung the results in the latest Maharashtra and Jharkhand polls. And yet, when Brand Modi is peaking, there are few female leaders in the BJP to interest female voters.
The BJP has a big disadvantage here. Look at the 30-member Modi Cabinet. There are only two women there—finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and women and child minister Annapurna Devi. Only two of the BJP’s 27 CMs and deputy CMs are women – Rajasthan deputy CM Diya Kumari, who caught the BJP high command’s eye due to her public fights with Vasundhara Raje, and her Odisha counterpart Pravati Parida.
There is one woman, Sudha Yadav, in the 11-member BJP Parliamentary Board. All seven national general secretaries are male. After Sushma Swaraj’s death, the BJP has had no female leader with a pan-India appeal. Even known faces like Uma Bharti and Vasundhara Raje have been sidelined. So are many others with proven abilities and potential—say, Smriti Irani and Poonam Mahajan. That’s a big opportunity for the Congress.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, as the Congress party’s face, can potentially exploit this big weakness in the BJP in the post-Modi era. He seems to be conscious of it too. Seldom does he attack Priyanka. Nor do other BJP leaders. In private conversations they concede it, saying that it pays them better political dividends to keep Rahul Gandhi at the centre of their criticism and ridicule.
That, in fact, should be the third reason for Rahul to bring Priyanka to the forefront. The BJP largely runs shy of attacking and ridiculing Priyanka the way they do to Rahul. Off and on, some leader rakes up the corruption allegations against her husband, Robert Vadra. It has lost the sting though. Because not much has happened in those cases despite the BJP being in power in Haryana since 2014. Priyanka is likely to draw many more eyeballs every time she gets up to speak inside and outside Parliament.
The fourth reason for the Congress to prop up Priyanka is the fact that the Maharashtra and Jharkhand elections have proved yet again that Rahul can’t ignite the imagination of aspirational India. It’s rather late in the day for him to re-imagine his politics. Priyanka doesn’t have to abandon everything he stands for, but she can potentially reinvent the grand old party.
The moot question here is why Rahul Gandhi would make way for Priyanka. And, even if he wants to, how? After all, there is no formal position to offer her. To answer the second question first, he can just step back. Let her lead the party’s campaigns, be its voice and emerge as its face. He can just lie low and let the people know that he is not in command any more, formally or informally. As for the first question, well, he has little to lose. Unless astrologers are telling him about a miraculous change in the public perception of him by 2029. If the stars are re-aligning for this change, voters don’t seem to know. Not yet.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
If the party has to fall back on this family to survive, it doesn’t deserve to survive. It should just wither away. Only those who have fattened themselves by being part of patronage ecosystem of this family will mourn if CONgress disappears without even a trace.
The writer is as clueless as the Congress. If anything Priyanka will perform the final rites of the Congress.
The real culprit is the matriarch ! She just cannot see her son just disappear from the Indian political scene. Indian electorate will soon be witness to a real life family soap Opera when Raihan will be pushed seriously onto the political scene. The wayanad rallies were a hint at what’s coming. grab your popcorns everybody !
Yes ,Rahul can move for his personal life. Priyanka can achieve something better than Rahul.
Nor can Priyanka can do anything. India and Congress need a true grassroot leader.
Entire gandhi family should step aside. Simple.