New Delhi: The Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is “very fragile” and the “smallest disturbance” can bring it down, Lok Sabha MP and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has said, claiming that some people from the ruling alliance are in touch with the Opposition.
In an interview to Financial Times, Gandhi claimed there was “great discontent” in the ruling side following the Lok Sabha elections, in which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) failed to secure a majority, as the Congress and other Opposition parties registered an upswing in numbers.
Gandhi said that the poll results brought about a “tectonic shift” in Indian politics, leaving the BJP “fatally wounded”. “The space in the Indian political system has been blown open,” he told the newspaper headquartered in London.
In the elections, the BJP’s tally came down to 240 from 303 in 2019, far short of the 272 seat-mark required by a party to form a government on its own. Consequently, the BJP is now dependent on allies, such as the Telugu Desam Party and the Janata Dal (United) to run the government with 293 seats.
At the same time, the Congress registered a jump in its tally from 52 seats in 2019 to 99. Three MPs, who won as independent candidates, have also extended their support to the party in the past few days. In total, the Opposition’s INDIA bloc has 237 MPs on its side.
“The numbers are such that they are very fragile, and the smallest disturbance can drop the government,” Gandhi told FT. “Basically one ally has to turn the other way,” he added. After the results, the INDIA bloc had decided to keep a close watch on the ruling side, instead of making any immediate efforts to cobble up numbers to form a government.
The MP said that a lot of ideas that succeeded in the election, helping the Opposition emerge as a formidable force, came from the two Bharat Jodo Yatras that he had undertaken in 2022-23 and 2024.
While the first one saw Gandhi marching on foot from Kanyakumari to Srinagar, covering over 4,000 km, during the second one, he travelled on a bus from Manipur to Maharashtra, traversing more than 6,000 km.
“The judicial system, the media, the institutional framework — all were shut (for the Opposition), and so we decided we have to literally, physically go do it… A lot of the ideas that succeeded in this election came from that walk, and they came not from us, but from the people of India,” he said.
In the interview, Gandhi, who has decided to retain the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seat, vacating Wayanad — the other seat he won from — for his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to contest from in a bypoll, made it a point to refer to the BJP’s loss in Uttar Pradesh’s Faizabad, under which Ayodhya falls.
“The idea of Mr Modi and the image of Mr Modi has been destroyed. The party that spent the last 10 years talking about Ayodhya has been wiped out in Ayodhya… Essentially what has happened is that the basic architecture of BJP, the idea of creating religious hatred, has collapsed,” he said.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
Also Read: Army chief, CDS rows behind Ambani, SRK — Rahul takes swipe at PM over seating at swearing-in