After gains against Modi, India’s Congress party slips before election

Within two months, India’s Grand Old Party has gone from a serious challenger to Modi to a struggling force, just before national elections.

New Delhi, India — A little more than two months ago, the Congress party, India’s biggest opposition force, seemed to be on a roll.

Rahul Gandhi, the leader of what is the country’s oldest political movement, the party of Mahatma Gandhi, had attracted large crowds on a nationwide march, rekindling hopes in the Congress that had been struggling for relevance after a series of political setbacks.

In May, the party won legislative elections in the southern state of Karnataka that is home to startup capital Bengaluru, unseating Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. And it was projected, in opinion polls, to win four out of five states – Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Chattisgarh and Mizoram – that voted for their state assemblies in November.

Those predicted wins, party veterans said, would have provided the ballast for the Congress to take Modi on in the general elections that are now weeks away.

Just the opposite happened. The opinion polls were wrong. The Congress won only Telangana.

“All opinion polls showed Congress was ahead by 2 percent votes in Madhya Pradesh elections, but we lost by 8 percent of votes. How did the final results go contrary to these opinion polls?” asks senior party leader, Digvijay Singh, former chief minister of the central Indian state.

Answering that question and similar ones tied to the gulf between the party’s hopes and recent results, quickly could be central to the chances of the 138-year-old party as it prepares to lock horns with Modi in the coming national vote, say analysts and Congress leaders.

A strong showing in those