Congress squanders gains from padayatra with Rahul missteps

Some years back, after yet another controversy surrounding his foreign visit in the aftermath of the Congress's 2019 Lok Sabha polls disaster, a party colleague suggested to Rahul Gandhi that he pin his passport onto a clothesline at his bungalow in Delhi for all to see.

For good measure, he should also pin a declaration, to whoever it may concern, that he will only travel abroad once the Congress party starts winning electorally. The party leader reasoned that this abstinence of sorts would do a world of good to his image and their party.

The leader later recollected that he felt he had touched a raw nerve, as Rahul didn't appreciate his "audacity" to enter a space the party scion considers personal.

When Rahul conveyed to party leaders last month his plans to travel abroad for a break after the onerous Bharat Jodo Yatra, they advised against it.

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They argued that it could potentially dent some of the gains of the Yatra, especially, as fellow traveller Yogendra Yadav put it, demolishing Rahul's image of a "pappu" — a bumbling leader that the Sangh Parivar, aided by elements within the Congress, spent years to construct.

Worse, Rahul's London visit came on the heels of an underwhelming Raipur plenary. While his speeches and press conferences were cogent and sharp during the Yatra, the distracted one in Raipur punctured the morale of the party delegates from across the country after the highs of the foot march.

The signs that Rahul was mentally exhausted after the Yatra were evident when the Yatra concluded on January 30 in Kashmir.

"The Congress has taken some missteps and reverted to a sort of default setting that has kept it dysfunctional since 2014," says political commentator Saba Naqvi, pointing to the visuals of Rahul skiing on the slopes of Kashmir's Gulmarg or his absence from the Northeast elections.

While few in the Congress believe Rahul said anything untoward during his UK visit, they feel peeved he left the country at a crucial political juncture when he could have campaigned in the Northeast or helped the party prepare for Karnataka.

Instead, the BJP pounced on a non-issue of the content of his speeches at Cambridge and elsewhere in the UK to distract from the heat it felt on the Hindenburg Research's allegations against the Adani Group.

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"Careful articulation is the hallmark of a leader. Intelligent he may be, but he also should consider the political fallout," an Opposition leader said, adding how Rahul was having a snowball fight with sister Priyanka in Kashmir and not on the electoral battlefield.

The Congress planned 'Haath se Haath Jodo Abhiyan' as a follow-up to the Bharat Jodo Yatra with some fanfare.

It included women's marches across India with Priyanka in attendance. Not a single such programme has been organised in any of the states since January 26, when the 'Haath se Haath Jodo Abhiyan' started.

At Raipur, dozens of delegates recruited during Priyanka's leadership in the UP Assembly polls in 2022 from among social workers and NGO activists did not turn up at the Raipur plenary. Embarrassed faces stared at the organisers.

Rahul's poorly delivered speech at the plenary did the rest.

"It was not a public rally but a party conclave," a Congress leader from Kerala lamented. "It is good to speak about larger politics, but he should have devoted 10 minutes to addressing the issues of the party and guidelines on what they should do for the organisation. Just imagine if he said I have walked across India, and now you have to take it further and give them a definite target. He did not do so."

Such has been the BJP's onslaught that since the opening of the second leg of the Budget Session of Parliament on Tuesday, the Congress has struggled to convince people that nothing that Rahul said in London was "anti-national"; that he did not request western intervention.

"Rahul Gandhi is not a polemicist, who indulges in rhetorical speeches. He is a truth seeker whose speeches are based on facts. That his acceptability has increased was evident during the Yatra when even RSS workers came to watch the Yatra," a party sympathiser says.

Amid the unrelenting attack by the BJP, Congress leaders fell back on whataboutery, pointing out how PM Narendra Modi's speeches abroad, including in Seoul in 2015 and another in Berlin in 2022, breached the 'Lakshman Rekha' of political decorum with his uncharitable attacks on previous governments.

As the Congress heads into the Karnataka elections, it is hopeful that Rahul will campaign widely and build on the adulation he received in the state during the Yatra.

Most importantly, the party has discovered him as its most valuable asset. The Congress hopes Rahul will help the party add to its Himachal win, thereby giving it a shot in the arm before the crucial Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Rajasthan polls in November.