Can Rahul Gandhi defeat the BJP? This is a question that's going to dominate India's politics till the 2029 general elections. In this piece, we'll lay down three things that Rahul Gandhi is doing right and can help him defeat the BJP and three things that's getting wrong and may be a problem for him.
By the end, we hope that you'll get a realistic sense of Rahul Gandhi's prospects. It doesn't matter whether you are a Rahul supporter, a Modi supporter, or someone who doesn't like either of them.
So what does Rahul Gandhi get right?
Let's begin with a point that isn't often acknowledged. Rahul Gandhi, along with Mallikarjun Kharge and Sonia Gandhi, have managed to keep the more or less Congress united. Now, people may point towards the large number of leaders who've left the party in the past 10 years. But think of it this way, did any of the exits split the Congress nationally? did they destroy the Congress in any state? One of them came close to it and we'll discuss it just in bit.
Most of the G-23 leaders who remained in the party have been accommodated in some way or the other. Those who left, couldn't really harm the Congress in any significant way. Take Ghulam Nabi Azad, his party failed to win anything in Jammu and Kashmir.
Compare Congress to what has happened to Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress, Sharad Pawar's NCP or the Shiv Sena. Splits have fundamentally damaged these parties. Then we have the example of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Left who were important national forces but have declined considerably in the last decade.
Forget smaller parties, compare the last 10 years of the Congress to the UPA period. Andhra Pradesh gave the UPA its largest number of seats in both terms. But the party's disastrous mismanagement of state politics led to Jaganmohan Reddy leaving the party and Congress has now become a non-entity at least in Andhra Pradesh after bifurcation.
Then there was Delhi, which the Congress ruled for 15 years until 2013. But then the party pretty much allowed Aam Aadmi Party to take over its entire base.
These mistakes happened before Rahul Gandhi began taking major decisions in the party.
Now we come to one state that the Congress has mismanaged under Rahul's watch and that is Assam. Himanta Biswa Sarma has systematically destroyed the Congress in Assam. In the 2026 Assembly elections, the Congress won just 19 seats, all from areas with a sizable Muslim population.
Congress supporters on social media often say that Rahul was right to let Himanta Biswa Sarma leave the party. Himanta's statements since then do validate this argument. But there's another way of looking at it. During the 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign, Himanta made a speech criticising Narendra Modi for the Gujarat pogrom and praying that he never becomes PM.
Was it better to have Himanta remaining within the Congress and criticising Modi or is it better that he's in the BJP, destroying the Congress and implementing communal policies?
So yeah, there are two ways of looking at this.
But the bigger point is that nationally, Rahul Gandhi has actually managed to keep the Congress more or less united.
Ideology
Rahul Gandhi has been remarkably consistent in his ideological beliefs, especially when it comes to secularism, gender equality and opposition to cronyism. On secularism, Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, Dr Manmohan Singh and Mallikarjun Kharge have been far closer to Congress' Nehrvian roots than Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao, all of whom dabbled with majoritarian politics.
The gender part is also interesting. Rahul Gandhi was talking about women's empowerment even in 2013-14. There was his interview with Arnab Goswami on the eve of the 2014 elections where he kept talking of women's empowerment. He was massively trolled on social media for it. Now, 12 years later, he's being praised for the saying the same thing. Of course, there's no doubt his articulation has improved greatly. But his beliefs have remained the same. Remember, Rahul Gandhi has quietly been helping out Nirbhaya's family for all these years, without making it public. It seems that he does things because he believes its the right thing to do, not for publicity.
This brings us to the third point: the politics of decency.
Few politicians have been reviled, maligned and ridiculed as much as Rahul Gandhi. He could have grown bitter and resorted to the politics of hate and cyncism to counter that image. But he didn't. At the expense of being called a 'loser', Rahul remained committed to decency in public discourse. That too in a period where hate speeches and abusive content have increased manifold.
Because of these three qualities, Rahul Gandhi has helped the Congress retain a consistent vote share of 20 percent nationally. This has ensured that no matter how powerful the BJP got, there would always be a base for anti-BJP politics in the country.
Now we come to what Rahul Gandhi is getting wrong.
What Rahul Gandhi is Getting Wrong
First point: Unable to shift the Modi voter
Take the August 2026 Mood of the Nation Survey by CVoter and India Today. 49 percent people picked PM Modi as their PM choice, down 6 percentage points from January 2026. But Rahul remained consistent at 27 percent. So while Modi is losing ground, Rahul isn't gaining. This is a problem. Last two general elections, Rahul Gandhi has managed to maintain the Congress' vote share at approximately 20-21 percent. But the BJP has been at 37 percent.
Sure, the Congress allies pull more votes than BJP allies but the BJP can't be defeated unless the gap between the two parties comes down substantially to about five percentage points. And there's no way of doing that except convincing BJP voters to vote for the Congress.
Yes some Modi voters are communal and can't be convinced. But many aren't. If everyone was communal, the Congress would never have won Himachal, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh or MP. People are people, they vote for whoever captures their imagination in an election.
Second thing Rahul gets wrong: Inconsistency
So while Rahul Gandhi has been steadfast in his ideology, he hasn't shown the same consistency in political tactics. We often forget that the best phase for the Congress in the recent past was 2017-18 when Rahul was leading even state-level campaigns from the front. In that period the Congress won Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. It formed a coalition government with the JD-S in Karnataka and came close to defeating the BJP in Modi's home state Gujarat.
In that entire period, the Congress' entire messaging was around the economy: demonetisation, GST, agrarian distress, unemployment. All the election surveys in January 2019 put Rahul within striking distance of Modi's numbers.
But then the Pulwama attack happened and equations changed.
What also changed was Rahul's pitch. He focused a great part of his 2019 campaign on the alleged Rafale scam. This wasn't all that easy to communicate and many argue that a purely economy-driven campaign may have helped Congress get a slightly better tally.
Point number three: Reluctance to get into state-level battles
Again we go back to 2017-18. Congress didn't project CM faces in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, MP or Rajasthan. Rahul Gandhi led the campaign and the party did very well. Now cut to 2024. Rahul Gandhi pretty much let the state units handle the campaigns in Haryana and Maharashtra. This was a mistake. Since the 2024 Lok Sabha result, Rahul's political capital has increased considerably. His active involvement could have helped, particularly in Maharashtra where many voters are ideologically driven. Similarly in Haryana, if there were factional issues, he or Mr Kharge could have stepped in an set the house in order. The same mistake is now being committed in Punjab, with factional dispute being allowed to fester.
So Realistically, Can He Defeat the BJP?
There's one big X-factor in this and that's whether elections are free and fair in the first place. The SIR in Bengal, with lakhs of voters being put under adjudication, went against the principle of free and fair elections. There is no other way to put this. The internal dissent shown by two election commissioners against CEC Gyanesh Kumar raises serious questions about the EC's functioning.
We don't know what other tricks the BJP is going to play in the run-up to the 2029 elections.
But the Opposition has decided against boycotting elections. So they have no choice but to fight. Probably they are hoping that the anti-BJP sentiment nationally becomes so strong that it neutralises any possible electoral manipulation.
The CJP protest gave a glimpse of how this could be achieved.
The plank has to be economic. A majority of Indians are hurting. Due to price rise, due to lack of jobs, agrarian distress. Take any survey, these three issues always figure in the top 5.
Rahul Gandhi probably needs to go back to what he did in 2017-18: a strong, economic message delivered consistently. But this needs to be combined with vision for fulfilling Indians' aspirations.
In the end, it doesn't matter whether Modi wins or Rahul, we want a life of dignity for all Indians. Because that's where a country's greatness truly lies.
This was the second episode of our new series Baaghi reporter. Please become a member of The Quint and help us do more such deep dives.