
Less US & UK, more Bihar & Gujarat, Rahul 2.0 is on a grassroots sprint with a packed schedule
For much of his political life, Rahul has battled the perception of being a reluctant or a 'non-serious politician'. The label, coined by his political opponents, was echoed by some within his own Congress party, frustrated by his lack of a consistent approach.
New Delhi: Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, was in Kerala Friday. The day before, he travelled to Assam. On Wednesday, he spent a few hours in Lucknow. Earlier in the week, Rahul met with Congress leaders from Jharkhand and Bihar in New Delhi. Last week, he was in Patna and Bhubaneswar, following a meeting with the Gujarat unit in the capital.
At a public meeting in April last year at Jawahar Bhavan in New Delhi, Rahul, for the first time, addressed the criticism directly. 'They say I'm not serious, I'm not interested in politics. Land Acquisition Bill, MNREGA, Niyamgiri, Bhatta Parsaul are not serious? When people talk about the larger population, they deem us non-serious. When you don't have the loudspeaker in hand, everything that you say is non-serious,' he told the audience.
VIDEO | Here's what Rahul Gandhi said addressing Samajik Nyay Sammelan in Delhi.
"They say I'm not serious, I'm not interested in politics. Land Acquisition Bill, MNREGA, Niyamgiri, Bhatta Parsaul are not serious. When people talk about the larger population they deem us… pic.twitter.com/z2l5ZsTsov
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) April 24, 2024
This was essentially an attempt to frame his early years in politics through an ideological lens, projecting him as an outsider within the establishment.
But the criticism he faced over the years was less about a lack of ideological commitment, and more about the perception that he was unavailable or unresponsive to his own party workers.
Rahul's repeated retreats from the public eye, his foreign visits, and his appearances mainly during elections, following the Congress's defeat in the 2014 elections only reinforced that image.
The 4,000-km Bharat Jodo Yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir in 2022–23 marked a clear departure from that pattern, helping recast him as a more serious political figure. He followed it up with the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra from Manipur to Maharashtra in early 2024.
Yet, not everyone was convinced of his ability to revive the Congress's moribund organisational machinery, especially in the states, in the absence of an effort to connect with the provincial leaderships.
'Be it Bharat Jodo Yatra or Bhatta Parsaul, those campaigns helped Rahul Gandhi project himself as a committed, ideological political leader whose heart beats for the people. But he was still seen as someone uninterested in organisational affairs, inaccessible to leaders outside. That has somewhat changed now,' a Congress Lok Sabha MP told ThePrint.
A look at Rahul's engagements from the beginning of this year reveals a gradual uptick in his visible involvement in the Congress's organisational affairs.
When asked about the noticeable change in Rahul's approach, Congress general secretary (organisation) K.C.Venugopal told ThePrint that the party leadership's visits to the states are now being planned differently than in the past.
'Earlier, we used to go to a state, address a public rally and return. That approach has now changed. Now wherever Rahul Gandhi goes, we arrange his meetings with senior leaders of the state, MPs, MLAs. Then there's one public programme before returning to Delhi. The same model is followed for Congress President Kharge too. We have been to nine to 10 states and the rest will also be covered,' Venugopal said.
For Rahul, while January was largely devoted to campaigning for the Delhi polls, he visited Bihar in February, his first of six visits to the poll-bound state so far this year.
In February, he also spent two days in his Lok Sabha constituency Rae Bareli, attending seven public events. In March, he landed in Ahmedabad for a two-day visit that he began by holding a meeting with the Political Affairs Committee of the Gujarat Congress unit, a practice that he's since followed in nearly every state.
LIVE: Addressing Congress Workers | Ahmedabad, Gujarat https://t.co/H5Laio3EVy
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 8, 2025
It is in Gujarat that the Congress rolled out its ambitious plan to restructure its district units, in an effort to place them at the centre of the party's larger efforts to reclaim lost political ground.
Venugopal said '70 per cent of the party's problems will be solved' if the project to revamp the district units, launched in a year that the Congress has announced will of organisational strengthening, becomes a success.
He said previously district presidents were appointed by the All India Congress Committee (AICC) by going through lists of names recommended by the state in-charges and presidents.
'Now, names are being shortlisted by AICC and PCC (Pradesh Congress Committee) observers after holding consultations with at least 5,000 to 6,000 people in every district. Of course, the final call will be that of the AICC. New Gujarat district presidents have been announced. Likewise, lists will be out for Madhya Pradesh and Haryana within this month,' Venugopal said.
Venugopal said one objective behind Rahul's meetings with state leaderships is also to gather feedback about the ongoing restructuring of the organisation.
In April, the Gandhi scion visited Bihar, Gujarat for the second time, Jammu and Kashmir, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh. On 7 April, apart from participating in public events including a 'Samvidhan Suraksha Sammelan', Rahul also met senior leaders and district presidents of the party's unit in Bihar.
In Gujarat, again on a two-day visit, he formally launched the project to revamp the district units and addressed an orientation programme for the observers appointed for this purpose.
पहलगाम में हुए कायरतापूर्ण आतंकी हमले में शहीद हुए शुभम द्विवेदी के परिजनों से आज मुलाक़ात कर उन्हें सांत्वना दी।
इस दुःखद घड़ी में पूरा देश शोकाकुल परिवारों के साथ खड़ा है। आतंकियों के ख़िलाफ़ सख्त और ठोस कार्रवाई होनी चाहिए और पीड़ित परिवारों को न्याय मिलना चाहिए।
इसी… pic.twitter.com/MaOj4H2J4w
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) April 30, 2025
Later that month, he travelled to Anantnag in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) to meet those injured in the Pahalgam terror attack.
On 26 April, he took part in the Bharat Summit organised by the Congress government in Telangana. Three days later, he landed in Rae Bareli again and attended a series of public outreach events, while also holding a meeting with the party's booth-level workers.
On 15 May, he returned to Patna, this time to participate in a protest and to watch the movie 'Phule' with influencers from the marginalised communities—activities that were aligned with his social justice pitch. Five days later, he was in Karnataka to address a public rally in Vijayanagar district.
आज पुंछ में पाकिस्तान की गोलाबारी में जान गंवाने वाले लोगों के परिवारों से मिला।
टूटे मकान, बिखरा सामान, नम आंखें और हर कोने में अपनों को खोने की दर्द भरी दास्तान – ये देशभक्त परिवार हर बार जंग का सबसे बड़ा बोझ साहस और गरिमा के साथ उठाते हैं। उनके हौसले को सलाम है।
पीड़ित… pic.twitter.com/CIDEXmqXxG
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) May 24, 2025
On 24 May, the LoP visited areas in J&K's Poonch affected by Pakistani shelling during Operation Sindoor.
Following his return to Delhi, he visited Delhi University and met the National Students' Union of India (NSUI) unit. On 30 May, he met the Congress's new leadership in Assam in Delhi, two days after the appointment of the party's Lok Sabha Deputy Leader Gaurav Gogoi as the president of the state unit.
June onwards, Rahul's involvement in organisational affairs attained a frenetic pace. On 3 and 4 June, he was in Madhya Pradesh and Haryana respectively, meeting party MPs, MLAs, Political Affairs Committees, district and block presidents among others.
In fact, his visit to the Congress's Haryana unit office in Chandigarh was the first by a member of the Gandhi family. On 6 June, he participated in party events in Bihar's Gaya and Rajgir. He also wrote an opinion piece in various newspapers, a route he rarely took before, on 6 June, triggering a heated debate on the independence, or the lack of it, of the Election Commission.
The Congress leader also marked his 55th birthday on 19 June by visiting the party's national headquarters and personally accepting greetings from leaders and workers. In the past, he had drawn criticism for being abroad on his birthdays, denying party members, who often cut cakes in his absence, the opportunity to meet him.
On 21 June, the Congress announced the new district presidents of the party in Gujarat, marking the culmination of its pilot project which has now been scaled up.
Venugopal said the performance of the new appointees will be assessed in three to four months and those found unable to deliver will be made to step down.
'There will be a clear-cut evaluation not just for the new district presidents but office-bearers at all levels. The AICC will carry out the assessment process. They will have to fulfil the primary task for which they are being appointed. Anyone who wants to contest elections will have to step down at least one year before they plan to do so. They will be given ideological training and made aware of the prevailing political situation,' he said.
Leaders of the Congress's tribal wing also shared a similar feedback they received from Rahul in two meetings he held with them over the last one month.
On 23 June, he met leaders of the All India Adivasi Congress, the party's tribal wing. He held another meeting 14 July, also sharing his vision to establish an empowered tribal leadership within the party.
This month, Rahul has already been to Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Assam and Kerala. Separately, in Delhi, he has held meetings with leaderships of the Jharkhand, Bihar and Gujarat units.
LoP Shri @RahulGandhi made a courtesy visit to senior leader Shri A.K. Antony in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. pic.twitter.com/6J6npGVBdw
— Congress (@INCIndia) July 18, 2025
'There is also an effort on his part to act as a bridge between the party's old and new guard that has come up under him,' said a senior Congress functionary who works closely with Rahul, referring to his meeting with former defence minister A.K.Antony in Thiruvananthapuram on Friday.
Many leaders, however, are cautiously optimistic about the shift in this approach and its implications for the party.
'He is going around sharing his vision and ideas with party workers down to the block level. But execution remains an area of concern. Last year, he had declared his intention to purge the Gujarat unit of BJP moles. The same set of people actually dictated the appointment process of the district presidents of Gujarat Congress in some cases,' said a leader of the party's Gujarat unit.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
Also Read: 50 yrs since Emergency, Congress's journey from justification to admission of 'mistake'
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Indian Express
26 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Rahul Gandhi to protest against ‘electoral fraud' in Karnataka Lok Sabha polls, to submit memorandum in Bengaluru
Congress Lok Sabha MP and Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi will on August 4 protest in Bengaluru against alleged irregularities that he said took place during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in Karnataka, Home Minister G Parameshwara said on Wednesday. 'He (Gandhi) will meet Election Commission officials and submit a representation on August 4. The Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) will organise events before he submits the memorandum,' the Karnataka minister told reporters. Last Thursday, Gandhi claimed he had '100 per cent proof' that the Election Commission 'allowed cheating' in a Lok Sabha constituency in Karnataka and that the elections were being 'stolen'. 'I am absolutely convinced that in constituency after constituency, this is the drama that is taking place. Thousands and thousands of new voters (were added),' he alleged. Gandhi made the remarks when the Opposition parties were protesting against the Election Commission's special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar. Programme details of Gandhi are yet to be finalised, Parameshwara said, responding to a question on whether a padayatra would be held. 'KPCC president (D K Shivakumar) and Chief Minister (Siddaramaiah) are finalising it. As of now, Rahul Gandhi will address party workers at Freedom Park. After that, he will submit a memorandum to the Election Commission. This is the tentative programme,' he said. Noting that Gandhi had raised complaints about electoral malpractices, Parameshwara said there had been other complaints too. 'In many constituencies, local legislators have filed complaints,' he said. Siddaramaiah echoed Rahul Gandhi's views later and suggested that the Congress suffered a setback in the April 2024 polls 'due to the illegal manipulation of electoral rolls….' 'There is clear evidence that electoral malpractice took place in Karnataka. In constituencies across the state, there were complaints by our party workers that new voters were added suddenly and in a suspicious manner, while names of long-time voters were removed without justification,' the chief minister said. The chief minister also accused the BJP of misusing the Election Commission for the purpose.


Mint
26 minutes ago
- Mint
Trump sees emergencies everywhere. Judges are considering whether to rein him in
WASHINGTON : Across the U.S. landscape, Donald Trump sees one emergency after another, and that is posing a host of challenges for the federal courts. Since beginning his second term, Trump has declared in dozens of presidential documents that the U.S. faces emergencies requiring him to take extraordinary actions that circumvent normal government processes. That gambit offers him a path of unilateral action instead of the uncertain route of enacting legislation through Congress. On Inauguration Day, Trump declared national emergencies involving energy production, border crossings from Mexico and transnational cartels. In the months since, he has proclaimed that the actions of the International Criminal Court, California water regulations and protests against his immigration policies all constitute emergencies of one form or another. The moves have spurred many lawsuits. While the details vary, the cases share common core questions: When does the law allow Trump to claim power this way? And are the emergencies he is claiming real ones? The president's strategy faces perhaps its biggest test yet on Thursday, when his use of tariffs to address a range of commercial, political and diplomatic issues he has labeled emergencies goes before a federal appeals court in Washington. The case is expected eventually to reach the Supreme Court; if Trump wins, legal experts say he could claim broad unilateral power to regulate the economy. Almost all presidents are aggressive in their use of executive power, but Trump 'has gone further with declaring emergencies than other presidents have," says Samuel Bray, a law professor at the University of Chicago. Trump early in his second term has built a mixed record in court. Several courts have rejected his proclamation under a 1798 statute, the Alien Enemies Act, that Venezuela is attempting a 'predatory incursion" of U.S. territory through the unauthorized immigration of members of a criminal gang. The president has argued that the law gives him the authority to apprehend Venezuelans and remove them without the typical due process given to immigrants who are residing in the U.S. without permission. In June, a federal appeals court in San Francisco agreed that Trump could use emergency powers to take control of the California National Guard over the objection of its regular commander in chief, Gov. Gavin Newsom, to protect federal personnel and facilities during immigration raids in Los Angeles. Trump enjoyed some success asserting emergency powers during his first term. In 2019, after Congress declined his request to fund a wall along the Mexican border, Trump declared a national emergency and diverted to the project $2.5 billion that lawmakers had appropriated for other purposes. Congress voted to cancel the border emergency, but Trump vetoed the resolution. Lower courts found that Trump exceeded his authority, but a 5-4 Supreme Court issued a temporary order in 2020 allowing him to continue with construction. The justices never got a chance to hear argument over the issue, as President Joe Biden terminated Trump's emergency declaration in January 2021. Biden didn't fare as well when he sought to cancel student-loan debt to mitigate the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2023, the Supreme Court said Biden's plan to forgive $430 billion in debt exceeded the powers Congress granted the president to waive or modify student-loan programs in response to national emergencies. In the tariff litigation, two federal courts found in May that Trump exceeded the authority granted by a 1977 statute, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, when he imposed tariffs to pressure foreign governments to meet U.S. demands. He said one set of tariffs was necessary to prod Canada, China and Mexico to step up their fight against fentanyl smuggling into the U.S., while another aimed to goad countries throughout the world to lower barriers against American exports. The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose tariffs, but it can delegate authority to the president. The 1977 law allows the president to take economic steps to deal with 'unusual and extraordinary" threats to America's 'national security, foreign policy, or economy." Whether the statute provides for tariffs at all is hotly debated, as is the difficult question of whether courts can and should second-guess a president's decision to proclaim that an emergency exists. In court briefs, the New York wine importer VOS Selections and other companies challenging the tariffs say Trump himself acknowledged that there is no emergency. 'At least nine times, Executive Order 14,257 describes the trade deficit as 'large and persistent,'" the plaintiffs say. A persistent problem 'that has been a consistent feature of the U.S. economy for 50 years" can't be deemed an emergency, they say. In reply, the Justice Department says that trade imbalances have grown into an emergency over recent years. But, as it has in other cases, the administration argues that judges are powerless to second-guess Trump's determinations. 'Courts cannot substitute their exercise of discretion for the president's," the government says. Historically, that has been the practice, says Peter Shane, a constitutional scholar at New York University. 'Federal courts are usually pretty deferential to presidential fact-finding when it comes to an emergency," he says. The Constitution provides the executive branch no explicit authority to set aside normal laws, suggesting the framers 'suspected that emergency powers would tend to kindle emergencies," as Justice Robert Jackson put it in a 1952 opinion. Nonetheless, presidents have over time asserted extraordinary authority to deal with contingencies that Congress didn't anticipate—and take actions that Congress didn't authorize. President Richard Nixon, faced with a Democratic Congress critical of his Vietnam War policies and conservative agenda at home, took unilateral action on several initiatives. Congress tried in the 1970s to reclaim some of the power that Nixon had consolidated in his so-called imperial presidency. The National Emergencies Act of 1976 established procedures for the president to declare emergencies, set a renewable one-year time limit on emergency declarations and gave Congress authority to cancel an emergency declaration. Trump has invoked that act at least eight times this year. Write to Jess Bravin at

Time of India
26 minutes ago
- Time of India
'Don't Control Me': Jaya Bachchan Snaps At Priyanka Chaturvedi During Op Sindoor Speech
During a debate on 'Operation Sindoor' in the Rajya Sabha, MP Jaya Bachchan took jibes at the NDA government. Questioning the symbolic use of the operation's name, she said, 'The real sindoor was wiped off the women's foreheads,' referring to victims' widows. She accused the government of destroying the faith and trust of the people of Kashmir and urged leaders to be humble and responsible. She said that she would not make remarks to provoke a BJP-Congress fight. Meanwhile, Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi was seen giggling and trying to control her laughter during Bachchan's speech in Parliament.#jayabachchan #operationsindoor #rajyasabha #parliamentdebate #ndagovt #kashmir #indianpolitics #priyankachaturvedi #congress #bjp #toi #toibharat Read More