Congress celebrates one year of Rahul Gandhi as Leader of Opposition, a year filled with more failures and controversies
The Congress party recently (2nd July) celebrated a year of Rahul Gandhi’s tenure as the Leader of the Party (LoP) in Lok Sabha. Gandhi, the forever-young leader of the Congress party, earned the position of LoP after a third consecutive defeat of his party in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
While his political career has been a combination of relaunches and consistent failures, he continues to be Congress’s torchbearer. After not getting a chance to celebrate any major electoral success in a decade, Rahul Gandhi is consoling itself by celebrating a year of Gandhi’s tenure as LoP, a direct consequence of the party’s defeat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The Party also released a ‘Newsletter‘ highlighting how Gandhi championed the “politics of love” and will continue to do so. On the contrary, this one year of Rahul Gandhi, as LoP, has not been any different from his entire political career, which is full of recurring failures and incompetence. Congress’s political journey under Rahul Gandhi has been a loop of propaganda-defeat-repeat. Here is a look at the highlights of a year of Gandhi’s term as LoP-
Rahul Gandhi’s repetitive electoral failures
The Congress scion, whose primary job is to lead his party to electoral victory, continues to deliver failure after failure in elections. Had he not been a ‘Gandhi’, his political career would have ended long ago with such consistency of failures. If one looks at last year’s elections alone, Congress, a national party, failed to win a single election on its own.
Apart from the Lok Sabha elections, elections for the assemblies of eight Indian states, viz. Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Odisha, J&K, Haryana, Maharashtra, and Jharkhand were held last year. Just like the Lok Sabha elections, Congress lost in all the states except Jharkhand, where it was able to form a government in coalition.
In the Haryana Assembly elections, Congress lost to the BJP. Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra in 12 assembly constituencies failed to leave any impact as his party won only 4 out of those 12 assembly seats. A similar performance was replicated by the Congress-led alliance, Maha Vikas Aghadi, in the Maharashtra elections, where it suffered a humiliating defeat. Congress secured fewer than 40 seats in the elections. Congress even lost the Delhi MCD elections. This is a continuation of his party’s performances in the assembly elections of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh the year before.
Congress party under Rahul Gandhi’s leadership has been reduced to the status of a mere ‘vote katwa’ party, which does not have the competence to win an election and can, at most, influence the election result by a few seats. This is a consequence of Rahul Gandhi treating politics like a part-time job. For most of the year, Gandhi remains occupied with his trips to foreign countries, where he makes controversial and false statements against India. The only time he is seen actively participating in politics is around elections. His lack of leadership and absenteeism have led Congress to its current place in national politics.
However, despite these electoral defeats, neither the Congress party nor Rahul Gandhi introspected and instead blamed the entire election process, displaying a typical bad loser behaviour.
Rahul Gandhi’s mysterious foreign visits and absence in Parliament
Rahul Gandhi is the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, but his attendance is lower than the average attendance of other members of Parliament. He is often seen missing from important debates in Parliament. In the last year, Gandhi took part in only 8 debates in Parliament, which is almost half the national average of 15 debates. Besides, Gandhi also lags behind in the average number of questions asked in the Parliament. He did not move a single private member bill. His combined attendance in the monsoon session and the winter session was less than 50%.
Interestingly, attending a Parliament session, where he can raise the issues of the “90%”, whom he claims to represent, does not seem to be on Gandhi’s priority list. It is not difficult to understand why Gandhi fails to resonate with the people of the country, despite the entire Congress machinery toiling hard to project him as the ‘messiah of the masses’.
During the last year, Rahul Gandhi spent more than 40 days on his foreign trips. His foreign visits are often surrounded by mystery and controversy. Gandhi is not a government representative, who might have to visit foreign countries to sign bilateral deals or MoUs. Yet, every year, he is seen visiting some country or the other for undisclosed or unconvincing reasons.
In June last year, Rahul Gandhi was in London to attend the graduation ceremony of his niece, while his party was grappling with defection issues in Goa. Subsequently, in September 2024, Rahul Gandhi was on his highly controversial visit to the US, where he launched sharp attacks on the BJP, the RSS and PM Modi. He went to compare Indian democracy with that of the war-torn countries of Syria and Iraq. He also met US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who is famously anti-India. Rahul Gandhi also made controversial statements on the Sikh community and reservations. This was followed by Gandhi’s visit to Vietnam in March 2025. Congress defended his visit, saying that he went to Vietnam to study their economic model.
Either Rahul Gandhi does not attend the Parliament sessions, or when he does, he ends up creating trouble for himself and his party with his controversial statements or activities. In December last year, Rahul Gandhi pushed BJP MP Pratap Chandra Sarangi on the stairs of the Parliament causing embarrassment to his party. Sarangi was pushed so hard by Gandhi that he had to be admitted to the hospital.
Rahul Gandhi expelled from Hinduism by Shankaracharya
In another embarrassing incident, Rahul Gandhi was expelled by Jyotirmath Shankaracharya Swami Avimukteshwarananda Saraswati from Hinduism for his derogatory remarks on Manusmriti. The Shankaracharya said that he waited for months seeking clarification from Gandhi for his remarks. But when he did not receive any response from Gandhi, he decided to excommunicate him for insulting the Sanatan Dharma.
This came after Rahul Gandhi claimed in Lok Sabha in December 2024, that Manusmriti protects rapists, contrasting the Hindu book with the constitution. He further claimed that for the BJP, the Manusmriti is superior to the Constitution. He made the remarks in reference to the Hathras rape incident.
Gandhi said that he visited the victim’s house where he was told that the rapists were roaming freely, while the victim’s family was confined to their house. “Where is this written in the Constitution? It is written in your book, it is written in the Manusmriti. It is not written in the Constitution. And if you say that you rule in UP, and the Constitution does not apply there. Manusmriti applies there,” Rahul Gandhi had said.
Rahul Gandhi rebuked by the SC for his remarks against Savarkar
In April this year, the Supreme Court of India reprimanded Rahul Gandhi for calling freedom fighter Veer Savarkar a British agent. The top court warned Gandhi that it would take suo motu action against him if he made any more remarks criticising freedom fighters like Savarkar. Gandhi made certain remarks in December 2024 claiming that Veer Savarkar was an agent of the British Raj and received a pension from them. A defamation suit was filed against him for his remarks.
The court stayed a defamation suit pending before Gandhi relating to his remarks about Savarkar, but reminded him that Mahatma Gandhi used the phrase “your faithful servant” in his correspondence with the Viceroy. The Court questioned if that made Gandhi a British agent.
Rahul Gandhi and Pakistan
Rahul Gandhi’s political moves seem to benefit Pakistan more than his party and India the least to India. His comments often provide ammunition to Pakistani propaganda and sabotage India’s international standing. In the aftermath of Operation Sindoor, which concluded in a ceasefire understanding between India and Pakistan, reached at the latter’s request, Rahul Gandhi peddled fake news by claiming that the ceasefire was brokered by the US.
He continued to spread the fake narrative despite the Indian government clarifying that the ceasefire was a bilateral decision. Gandhi falsely presented India’s agreement for a ceasefire as a “surrender” before the US, and the same was further propagated by his party. Gandhi’s irresponsible and misleading comments were picked up by Pakistani media, which utilised them to advance their malicious narrative.
Rahul Gandhi’s one year as the leader of opposition as well as his entire political career has been full of failures and disappointments. The political revival of the grand old party can clearly not happen with ‘Gandhi Parivar’ at the helm of the affairs. It is high time that the Congress party got a fresh leadership comprising full-time politicians instead of part-time ones.
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