India’s principal opposition leader is gaining ground, but largely because Narendra Modi’s political armor has begun to crack
For more than a decade, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) operated on a comforting electoral equation. Its formula for national dominance relied on two variables: the towering charisma of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, and the perceived incompetence of his primary challenger, Rahul Gandhi. Within the headquarters of the BJP, Gandhi was long viewed as the party’s greatest strategic asset. So long as the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty remained the face of the opposition, victory for Modi seemed guaranteed. To ensure this dynamic held, the BJP machinery spent years lampooning him as Pappu, an inexperienced novice unfit for high office.
That comfortable paradigm is now fracturing. A decade after being dismissed as a political lightweight, Gandhi is undergoing a steady process of political rehabilitation. The narrative of Indian politics is once again converging on a direct confrontation between Modi and Gandhi, looking ahead to the national contest in 2029. Yet a closer examination of this shift reveals a curious paradox. Gandhi’s rising stock owes less to a sudden surge of personal brilliant strategy than to the gradual dimming of Modi’s once-invincible political aura.
On paper, Gandhi’s numerical progress is indisputable. After being reduced to a humiliating 52 seats in 2019 parliamentary elections, the Congress party rebounded to 99 seats in the 2024 general election. That recovery secured Gandhi the official title of Leader of the Opposition, a constitutional post that Congress lacked the numbers to claim in the previous two parliaments. The BJP’s grand slogan of a Congress-mukt Bharat, an India free of the Congress party, has effectively crashed against reality. Congress has won elections in Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana, Kerala, and entered government in Tamil Nadu as part of a long-standing coalition.
Gandhi has also personal political points to claim. In the 2024 elections, he contested and won both the Wayanad and Raebareli constituencies, securing a larger winning margin in Raebareli than Modi achieved in his own seat of Varanasi. His 4,000-kilometre walk across the country, the Bharat Jodo Yatra, forced his critics to take his stamina seriously. Slogans he championed, particularly the warning that the constitution was under threat, resonated widely across the electorate. He played a central role in assembling the opposition INDIA bloc, forcing even stubborn regional heavyweights like Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee to accept his leadership.
Behind the scenes, Gandhi has shown an uncharacteristic willingness to make hard organizational choices. In Karnataka, he successfully managed the delicate power transition from the powerful backward-class leader Siddaramaiah to his ambitious deputy, D.K. Shivakumar, avoiding the public feuding that previously crippled the party in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh. In Kerala, he bypassed close confidant to elevate local leader who command ground support. In Tamil Nadu, he acted with unusual agility to forge ties with new political actors like the actor-turned-politician Vijay and his party, TVK.
Yet for all these tactical improvements, Gandhi’s balance sheet remains littered with persistent vulnerabilities. The momentum from the 2024 national election failed to carry over into crucial state contests. Congress suffered damaging defeats in Maharashtra and failed to capture Haryana despite favorable conditions. Within the INDIA alliance, deep-seated mistrust lingers. The alliance remains fractured in key states, with the Aam Aadmi Party maintaining its distance and the Left parties offering only conditional cooperation.
More damningly, Gandhi has not significantly closed the popularity gap between himself and the prime minister. Independent national surveys continue to show Modi holding a formidable lead over his challenger in personal approval ratings. While Modi’s scores have dipped slightly and Gandhi’s have edged upward, the gulf between the two men remains wide.
The primary driver of Gandhi’s improved standing is not an explosion of organic enthusiasm for his vision, but rather a series of missteps and external pressures that have eroded Modi’s authority. For twelve years, Modi projected an image of absolute decisiveness and invulnerability. That image has taken repeated hits since the 2024 election stripped the BJP of its single-party majority, reducing its parliamentary tally from 303 seats to 240.
Missteps on domestic issues have cost the government dearly. The handling of student protests over paper leaks in national examinations ended in a rare public retreat, culminating in the resignation of the education minister. Allegations surrounding donations to the Ram Mandir trust sparked disquiet even among core Hindutva supporters, a group that previously regarded the administration with uncritical devotion.
Foreign policy, long a centerpiece of Modi’s personal brand, has similarly yielded diminishing returns. In 2019, the military strikes in Balakot following the Pulwama attack produced a massive nationalistic surge that propelled the BJP to a decisive victory. By contrast, recent cross-border military operations, such as Operation Sindhoor, failed to generate a comparable wave of popular enthusiasm. Expectations were inflated by aggressive political rhetoric promising the immediate recovery of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. When hostilities ceased abruptly and foreign leaders claimed credit for brokering a truce, the government’s narrative collapsed into awkward silence.
Compounding these domestic headaches are external headwinds. Tariff threats from Washington, combined with a passive diplomatic posture during conflicts in West Asia where India appeared overly reliant on Israel, have damaged the perception that Modi commands global respect.
Gandhi has also benefited from an unintended consequence of the BJP’s own success. Over the past decade, the ruling party focused its formidable electoral energy on neutralizing powerful regional chieftains. Leaders who once posed a formidable threat to central authority, such as Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, Naveen Patnaik in Odisha, and Uddhav Thackeray in Maharashtra, have seen their ambitions clipped. With regional satraps weakened, anti-BJP political forces have no choice but to rally behind Gandhi as the sole national alternative.
The ultimate test of Gandhi’s political evolution will take place in Uttar Pradesh, where Congress must coordinate with Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party to defeat the BJP in India’s most populous state. A strong showing there would deal a severe blow to Modi’s standing and cement Gandhi’s credentials.
For now, Gandhi’s resurgence remains a derivative phenomenon. He is rising because his opponent is stumbling and because rival opposition figures have been diminished. To convert this relative gain into absolute victory, he must convince an anxious electorate that he offers a credible, coherent vision for governing India. Until he achieves that breakthrough, the contest between Modi and Gandhi will remain defined less by the challenger’s strength than by the incumbent’s decline.