Analysts suggested the drubbing underscored the deepening irrelevance of the Nehru-Gandhi family in an India where the masses see Modi, 68, as a messiah.

Worse still, Gandhi lost the parliamentary seat of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh – the state with the most number of seats in the Lok Sabha – that had been successfully defended by three of his family members in past polls.

His sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had been drafted to boost the family’s appeal in Uttar Pradesh but she failed to make headway.

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Asked who was responsible for the loss, he said: “This is between my party and me. Between me and the Congress Working Committee.”

He added: “It doesn’t matter what I think went wrong. Frankly, people of India have decided that Modi should be the prime minister, as an Indian person, I accept it.”

But where did it all go wrong, really?

Congress has for generations relied on the Nehru-Gandhi family name and populist policies such as handouts to the poor to win support.

Trouble began soon after the party formed a coalition government after the 2009 polls. Federal investigation agencies followed a trail of corruption allegations in the allocation of 2G spectrum licences.

The impression that the government was corrupt would eventually snowball and Modi, then the chief minister of the state of Gujarat, was quick to project himself as an incorruptible leader who had boosted local development.

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Modi had announced a cash transfer scheme for farmers and reservation in higher educational institutions for the upper castes, but with his campaign stoking national fervour, Congress was on the back foot in presenting a similar vision that could resonate with voters.

“It was one of the reasons why the BJP won such a big majority in 2019. Yes, the BJP would have emerged as the single-largest party but those incidents helped [Modi] get the kind of support they did in 2019,” said Sanjay Kumar, director of the Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS).

A Congress party leader told the South China Morning Post that Gandhi “came to control all aspects of the party’s campaign”.

“Whatever we would do, he would say, ‘Bring in Rafale.’ There was tremendous nudging on his part …. Till the time they found two money trails, it was single-handedly his conviction. I don’t know where that doggedness came from,” said the leader, who requested anonymity as he was not authorised to comment publicly.

Before vote-counting began on Thursday for the 600 million ballots cast over India’s mammoth six-week election, party officials told Reuters that Congress had done poorly with policy communications and forging pre-election alliances in key states.

Much of this was due to disagreements among senior leaders, they said.

Kumar of CSDS said the 2014 election showed the BJP’s success at reaching out to younger voters. About 9 per cent of eligible voters – 81 million – this time around were first-timers.

“In 2014, the BJP got 37 per cent of the vote of the 18-to-22-year-olds when it won 31 per cent of the vote across the country …. It was about reacting to the youth’s aspirations. Modi worked hard to mobilise the young voters through various interactions,” he said.

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Sudha Pai, a retired professor of political science, said she believed Gandhi had made an impact on voters but it was not enough.

“He has behaved much better than Modi. I think that is being appreciated a lot, but then, people who follow Modi feel that aggression in politics is needed,” said Pai, who used to teach at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

“I wish he joined the government and gained some administrative experience. He has spent most of the time trying to revive the party.”

So what next?

There have been calls for Gandhi to resign.

“It is astonishing that Rahul Gandhi has not yet resigned as Congress President. His party performed very poorly; he lost his own pocket borough.

Both self-respect, as well as political pragmatism, demand that the Congress elect a new leader. But perhaps the Congress has neither,” tweeted historian Ramachandra Guha.

The Congress party official in charge of communications, Randeep Singh Surjewala, denied rumours that Gandhi had offered to resign.

However, the Congress party leader, who declined to be named, said the question of Gandhi’s resignation was likely to be brought up in a meeting of the party’s highest decision making body, the Congress Working Committee, on Saturday.

Nistula Hebbar, political editor of The Hindu newspaper said: “It is pretty much over to the Congress to decide if it wants to shield Rahul Gandhi, like they have done other times.

“If they do, the going gets much tougher for the party to revive from its present situation,” she told AFP.

For Abu Alex, who lives in Bangalore and voted for the Congress in Thiruvananthapuram, time is on Gandhi’s side.

The public policy analyst at a private firm pointed to how Gandhi, then the freshly anointed party leader, had led Congress in a vociferous challenge of the BJP’s dominance in Modi’s home state of Gujarat, denting its ability to sweep the election by winning 77 of 182 seats.

“Up to 2014, he seemed more inaccessible, media shy, unclear in most of his opinions. I saw him change post the Gujarat election, and he became more vocal, less erroneous in speeches and more forthcoming.

“[Despite losing] this election, people would have a certain degree of respect, that he showed a certain degree of dignity while fighting this election, he is still a leader in the making,” said Alex.

Additional reporting by Reuters and AFP.