Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi made his boldest move yet when he took his fight against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s doorstep last week. Breaching restrictions in a high security zone, he led a flash Congress protest demonstration that included his sister and Lok Sabha MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to the PM’s residence on Lok Kalyan Marg and refused to budge even after Modi dispatched his Minister of State Jitendra Singh to talk to him.
It took a posse of at least eight policemen to physically lift Rahul Gandhi from the protest site and send him to Chhatrasal stadium, where he and other Congress leaders were detained for several hours before being let off. Later, addressing a press conference, he said, "We felt that if the students of India are on the streets, then the Opposition should also be on the streets."
This was the first hint of the Congress party's still-evolving, post-Jantar-Mantar strategy to ride the momentum created by the nationwide youth protests which culminated in an unexpected concession from the Modi government: the resignation of Union Cabinet Minister Dharmendra Pradhan from the education ministry.
Will Congress-SP Come Together?
Street protests have their place as a tactic to build public sentiment and mount pressure on the government of the day. However, ultimately, the battle has to shift from the streets to the formal, structured arena in which politics operates in a democracy: elections.
A development that went almost unnoticed in the melee was the presence of Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav and his MPs at the Congress sit-in outside the PM’s residence. He was the only non-Congress INDIA bloc leader to join Rahul Gandhi that day. While most of the media paid little attention to this, the message from the visible Congress-SP bonhomie must have hit home where it matters in the BJP because of the implications for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections due early next year.
UP is central to the BJP’s national political dominance. It is also home to Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency of Varanasi. Consequently, it is a state the party must win at all cost next year.
The SP’s decision to be a part of a Congress-led protest must be seen against this backdrop. It sets the stage for a united Opposition challenge to the BJP in UP, where echoes of the 2024 Lok Sabha setback still reverberate. The BJP’s tally fell by 28 seats to 36 out of 80, giving a huge boost to the INDIA bloc, which won 43 seats.
There is an interesting lead-up to the SP’s presence at the Congress protest. The day before, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and Akhilesh Yadav held a closed-door meeting in Parliament House for almost an hour and and a half. Significantly, no aides were allowed in, including prominent state leaders from both parties.
According to bits of information trickling out to Congress circles from that meeting, the three leaders sealed an understanding for the upcoming UP elections.
The Gandhi siblings are believed to have assured Akhilesh Yadav that the UP polls will be fought with him as the chief ministerial face; Congress leaders like Imran Masood and Pramod Tiwari who delight in pinpricks directed at SP will be issued strict cease and desist orders; and while the SP will fight the lion’s share of the seats, as it should be the chief Opposition to the BJP, it will accommodate the Congress as much as it can.
2027 in Sight
After the near loss in 2024, the BJP has burnished its election machine to make itself virtually undefeatable—as evident from the string of victories in Assembly polls since then. The biggest prize was West Bengal where the party swept out Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress which were haunted by a strong three-term anti-incumbency sentiment.
Defeating the BJP in UP is by no means an easy task. Apart from the formidable election machine at its command, the party has a charismatic face in Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. He is not only a powerful orator; he is a master of polarisation and is widely hailed for keeping a tight check on law and order.
However, he is vulnerable on two fronts. One is a two-term possible anti-incumbency. The other is the donation theft at the Ram mandir which has shaken the faith and trust of the Hindu community.
Although Adityanath quickly went into damage control mode by setting up an SIT to investigate the embezzlement and eight employees of the temple trust were arrested, it is the single biggest top-of-the-mind issue in UP.
These are early days, and it remains to be seen whether the anger that spilled out on the streets against the Modi government crystallises into a political mood that will impact upcoming state elections before the 2029 Lok Sabha poll. And, more importantly, whether the Opposition led by the Congress can harness the josh and use it to its advantage.
The government clearly believes that the youth protest was a cloudburst, not a cyclone. It has reverted to its old playbook of intimidation and harassment, trying to discredit the students as pawns of a foreign toolkit successfully employed for regime change in Bangladesh and Nepal.
It has also gone back on its assurance to leaders of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) that the students arrested during the agitation will be released and cases against them dropped.
Congress Remains at Crossroads
There is enough out there for the Opposition to take advantage of. However, while Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi may have reached an understanding for UP, the Congress remains undecided about its approach to the various student groups who led the protests.
For instance, Rahul Gandhi met with the AISA leaders who went on hunger strike with Sonam Wangchuk at Jantar Mantar. However, he has not reached out to leaders of the CJP which birthed protests. Congress sources say he is chary of their earlier connections with Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party an is, therefore, reluctant to be seen with them.
As things stand today, every group opposed to the government is working separately and organising their own protests. The Left student organisations are holding their own demonstration to demand the release of arrested students. The CJP is threatening to revive its agitation. The Congress plans to hold its own demonstrations.
The government hopes that these divisions will create the elbow room its needs to regain its supremacy. But to paraphrase the late Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong and the famous writer VS Naipaul, if a thousand mutinies bloom, it can only mean social turmoil which the Modi government can ill-afford in the run up to 2029.
(Arati R Jerath is a senior Delhi-based journalist. She tweets @AratiJ. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)