Gandhi dynasty heads for third defeat against Modi

The once mighty Congress party has struggled against Hindu nationalist alliance, reports Namita Singh from Uttar Pradesh

A ripple of excitement spreads through the crowd waiting outside in the 40C midday heat in this corner of Uttar Pradesh, northern India – an island in a sea of constituencies supporting Narendra Modi’s BJP. “Rahul-ji’s helicopter has come!”, announces an audience member, not long before campaign songs start to blare from speakers and Rahul Gandhi, India’s second-most recognisable politician, steps onto the stage.

This was the scene just a couple of weeks ago in one of the last bastions of fervent support for the Gandhi-Nehru family, one of the world’s great political dynasties whose members include three Indian prime ministers. Among them is Rahul Gandhi’s great-grandfather, the first and longest-serving leader of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru.

Yet India has changed dramatically since the time when Nehru led the Congress party, with Saturday’s exit polls indicating that Mr Modi’s Hindu nationalist alliance will take more than 350 parliamentary seats when the full results of the country’s general election results are announced tomorrow.

Congress and its allies are forecast to win barely a third of that number, making it a third election in a row where India’s grand old party has desperately underperformed. They say the BJP’s widespread abuse of government investigative agencies to harass opposition leaders and parties, including a total freeze on Congress’s bank accounts, mean this election has been neither free nor fair.