New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi had emerged as the leader of the Congress and his two nationwide yatras had boosted the grand old party’s prospects in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, senior party functionaries said on Tuesday.
As per the Election Commission figures, the Congress was poised to get 99/543 Lok Sabha seats in 2024, almost the double of the 52 seats the party had won in the previous 2019 national polls. In 2014, when the Congress-led UPA had lost power, the party had touched its lowest ever tally of 44 seats. A decade later, party managers credited the former chief for playing a role behind the Congress tally almost touching 100.
“Rahul Gandhi had led an aggressive campaign in 2019 also but we could win only 52 seats. This time, the preparations had begun much earlier. His two nationwide yatras in 2022 and 2023 covering the entire length and breadth of the country actually set the tone for the party’s resurgence. All along the yatra routes lakhs of people converged to express their solidarity. This boosted our morale and restored the party-people connection. The two yatras also helped the party become a rallying point of the opposition unity which was firmed up as INDIA bloc last year,” AICC in charge of UP Avinash Pande told ETV Bharat.
According to the AICC functionary, the yatra’s impact and the social engineering with ally Samajwadi Party helped the alliance achieve surprising results in crucial state Uttar Pradesh, which sends the largest 80 members to the Lok Sabha and where the INDIA bloc was set to score more than half the seats.
“The feedback obtained from the public during Rahul Gandhi’s yatra became the basis of our 2024 manifesto tailored around the 5 Nyay and 25 guarantees. An aggressive campaign took the message to the households who responded handsomely to the two big issues of unemployment and price rice,” said Pandey.
According to party insiders as focus shifted to UP, Rahul decided to join the fray in Rae Bareli where he defeated the BJP’s Dinesh Pratap Singh with a heavy margin. The former party chief also won the Wayanad seat in Kerala for a second consecutive term. A debate was now ongoing among the party strategists whether Rahul should retain Rae Bareli, vacated by his mother Sonia Gandhi, who represented the family stronghold from 2004 to 2024, or Wayanad, which he described as his second home.
“As UP leaders we would want him to retain Rae Bareli but that decision has to be made by Rahul Gandhi. We are very happy over the alliance’s performance in the state and with the overall show of the party. Rahul Gandhi must be credited with boosting the Congress prospects nationally as he campaigned across the country aggressively targeting the Modi government and flagging our promises,” AICC secretary in charge of UP Tauqir Alam said.
According to Alam, the BJP tried every trick in the book to target Rahul Gandhi soon after he announced his first Bharat Jodo Yatra which was aimed at reviving the Congress ahead of the 2024 national elections.
“The ED questioned him for long hours in the fabricated National Herald case but nothing came out of it. Later, when he questioned the link between PM Modi and his businessman friend Adani, they got him convicted and sentenced to jail in a criminal defamation case, disqualified him from the Lok Sabha and even took away his government accommodation to target him but the leader never lost his nerves. He fought a six month long legal battle and won his seat back. All these years, he was the lone opposition leader who consistently took on the Modi government. Naturally he is the leader of the opposition today,” said Alam.
Rahul started his active political career in 2004 when he entered the Lok Sabha as an MP from Amethi, the traditional Gandhi family seat in UP. He was later made an AICC general secretary and became vice president of the party in 2013. During the UPA years from 2004 to 2014, he played a key role in the passage of key bills related to rural jobs scheme MGNREGA, Land Acquisition of Farmers and the Right to Food Act.
The Congress lost power in 2014 when his mother Sonia Gandhi led the Congress. In 2017 Rahul became the party president through an internal poll process and led the 2019 national polls campaign. After the poll debacle, he owned up responsibility for the poor performance and resigned from the post. The subsequent years saw him play a key role in the revamp of the party which elected veteran Mallikarjun Kharge as president through internal polls in October 2022.
“The BJP spent thousands of crores of rupees to tarnish the image of Rahul Gandhi whom they saw as a key challenger to Modi. They knew if they would be able to destroy Rahul Gandhi, they would severely dent the Congress party. All through the past decade he asked tough questions from the Modi government be it the Rafale jet deal or the three controversial farm laws or the demonetization and the faulty GST. He consistently positioned the Congress vs BJP fight as an ideological one and inspired the rank and file to rally around the core values of secularism. The two yatras that he undertook shattered the negative image created by the BJP. The people saw the real person in him and began to appreciate his style of functioning. Not only the two yatras charged up the organization which was lying low after a series of poll defeats, he set an example by continuing the first yatra despite severe pain in the leg,” AICC secretary in charge of Gujarat BM Sandeep Kumar said.
“His focus on saving the Constitution, the democratic rights of the marginalized sections and the OBC politics helped us bring together a diverse range of political parties who joined the INDIA bloc to safeguard democracy in this crucial election,” he added.
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