00:00One of the big fallouts of the general election in India this year has been the slow and steady
00:09revival of the Congress party and of course the opposition as a whole. Going up from 52
00:14seats to 99 this time, this has been a huge sigh of relief for India's principal opposition
00:19party, which had been staring at a series of setbacks since the Modi wave first came
00:24to India in 2014. And for that, the credit goes to the Gandhi siblings, Rahul and Priyanka
00:30and to the Congress president Malik Arjun Kharge. Rahul Gandhi in particular has been
00:34at the receiving end of a lot of vilification when it comes from the BJP, whether it comes
00:41from the mainstream media. And today, in a way, he does stand vindicated. Data that the
00:47Indian Express extrapolated from Rahul Gandhi's two Bharat Jodo yatras, which were conducted
00:52a year apart, show that the Congress and its allies actually did much better along
00:57the Bharat Jodo yatra routes and that itself is significant. And the Congress has done
01:03better in states where it had been almost wiped out last time, like in Maharashtra,
01:07Haryana, Rajasthan, etc. There are of course states where they still continue to do badly
01:13and face a very strong BJP. Gujarat, although they won one seat this time, breaking the
01:19winning streak of the BJP. And then there's Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh. These are still
01:25the Congress's weak spots which they need to focus on. But Rahul Gandhi in particular
01:31has come out really a very different politician from this election. We also saw surprisingly
01:37a Lok Niti CSDS survey done in UP, which actually showed that 36% of respondents in UP preferred
01:45Rahul Gandhi as Prime Minister over Narendra Modi at 32%. Now, this was unthinkable perhaps
01:51even a year ago, but it does tell you the changing story of India's opposition and
01:55of the Congress in particular. It is now up to them to keep up the momentum and the heat
02:00on the government and to slowly and steadily continue their revival as well as build up
02:05strategic alliances as they did in this general election.
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