Indian election results: What next for Rahul Gandhi and Congress after their flop at the polls?
- With the grand old party winning only 52 of 542 seats, its future and that of the organisation’s president now hang in the balance
- The drubbing underscored the deepening irrelevance of the Nehru-Gandhi family in an India where the masses see BJP’s Modi as a messiah, analysts say
The India Today magazine in December even named the party’s 48-year-old leader, Rahul Gandhi, its Newsmaker of the Year, a seeming turnaround from the 2014 election when Congress had its worst-ever showing and Modi, a Hindu nationalist, became India’s leader.
But as election results streamed in on Thursday, that vision of a resurgence fell flat. Instead, with Congress winning only 52 of 542 seats – and failing to get a single seat in 13 out of 29 states – the party’s future and that of Gandhi, the scion of a political dynasty, now hang in the balance.
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.
