What the Delhi verdict means for Rahul Gandhi
Rahul Gandhi's leadership has seen Congress decline from Delhi dominance to zero seats, facing credibility issues and limited electoral success.
In three successive Delhi legislative assembly elections, the Congress swept the city, winning a majority of the seats. In three successive Delhi legislative assembly elections, the Congress got decimated in the city, failing to win a single seat. No other single data point perhaps encapsulates the story of the decline of India’s grand old party than this journey from dominance to having zero presence in the national capital. And the man who has been at the helm of the party through these three successive routs is Rahul Gandhi.
Given it is the Congress, there will be an immediate attempt to rescue and protect the family from any blame for Delhi. The party’s spin doctors are citing the marginal increase in vote share as progress. Loyalists are touting the party’s ability to play spoiler in a bunch of seats as its importance. There will be secret and not-so-secret glee at AAP’s fate, for Kejriwal is seen as the single most important reason for the erosion in United Progressive Alliance government’s credibility and the memory of that persists. And there will be enough deflection by attributing results to local factors or making wishful projections of the future.
But none of this will take away from the hard political reality that barring the jump from 52 to 99 seats in last year’s Lok Sabha elections, Rahul Gandhi has nothing to show for his political judgment and efficacy in recent years. In states where the Congress is in a direct contest with the BJP, the BJP continues to win. In states where the Congress is a junior partner of an opposition alliance against the BJP, its value addition is doubtful. And in states where it is a third player where the BJP and a regional party fight it out for the top spot, its track record in reversing fortunes has been very limited.
All of it means that Gandhi’s messaging isn’t working, nor is the current division of labour he has orchestrated between himself and the party president and his sister. Gandhi will continue to lead the party because the party is structurally incapable of looking beyond the family. But Gandhi’s credibility with allies will continue to dip, as will his political reputation. His failure to convert the 2024 opening into a more sustainable path for political revival, and instead continue to preside over the party’s decline, must rank as one of most startling political failures of a leader in recent times.