Five Questions on Which PM Modi Has Felt the Heat of Opposition Onslaught
P. Raman
The 88-hour India-Pakistan conflict and its aftermath have an unnoticed subtext – a perceptible shift in the country’s political narrative, with the opposition parties aggressively highlighting governance failures.
True, the Congress, which leads the opposition, had never abandoned its role as a party with a national perspective. What has happened this time is that it appears to have wrested the upper hand. This despite the fact that the cash-starved party has been struggling to manage with minimal resources, in contrast to the BJP, which has more than 30 official spokespersons and can well afford the services of professionals. In 2017, the appointment of BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra as non-official director on the board of ONGC, a central PSU, had prompted activist Yogendra Yadav to post on X: “So the speaking fee for BJP spokesperson is Rs 27 lakh.…”
The Trinamool Congress, the third largest Opposition party in the Lok Sabha, has decided to open a new office on 20 Rajendra Prasad Road to mark its national presence and react to daily developments.
The party has always been vocal. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee sought answers from Modi to five questions – on Manipur, women, youth, corruption and vendetta – and her party colleagues tore into the prime minister for not attending the all-party meeting on the Pahalgam terror attack and electioneering in Bihar instead. Trinamool leaders have also slammed Modi for taking credit for the Chenab rail bridge, with MPs Derek O’Brien and Sagarika Ghose accusing him of deliberately concealing the contribution of former railway minister Mamata Banerjee, and former prime ministers Manmohan Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
While Trinamool MPs are active in Parliament and on social media, the new office will help the party respond to day-to-day developments at the Union government during the period the House is not in session.
Samajwadi Party, the second largest opposition in the Lok Sabha, has also stepped up its offensive. Its leader Akhilesh Yadav lambasted the Modi government for its failure to protect the tourists in Pahalgam, and said Operation Sindoor was a cover-up for intelligence gaps.
On Pahalgam, the opposition parties condemned the terrorists in one voice while at the same time highlighting the home ministry’s failure to provide security for the tourists. They pointed to Amit Shah’s claim just weeks before that normality had returned to the state after the abolition of Article 370. The Congress also took on the government for its failure to arrest any of the terrorists responsible for the massacre.
The opposition extended full support to the government for the offensive against Pakistan, and then went all out against the prime minister for declaring a ceasefire ‘under pressure from US President Donald Trump’.
Since the Pahalgam massacre, in at least five cases, the Modi establishment has felt the heat of the sustained Opposition tirade, forcing it to quickly try to douse the fire:
- After visuals of an Indian student being pinned to the ground by police at Newark airport appeared on social media, Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh attacked Narendra Modi for his failure to speak up against Indians being mistreated in the US. Worried about the domestic fallout, especially in Gujarat, the very next day the external affairs ministry raised the issue with the US embassy in New Delhi.
- Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi asked a pertinent question: Why did India inform Pakistan about the impending air strike before it began? Citing a video in which Jaishankar can be heard saying Pakistan was informed at the start of the operation, Rahul asked: “Informing Pakistan at the start of our attack was a crime. EAM has publicly admitted that GOI did it. Who authorised it? How many aircraft did our air force lose as a result?” Two days later, Rahul repeated: “The EAM’s silence is not only just telling — It is damning. So I’ll ask again: How many Indian aircraft did we lose because Pakistan knew? This wasn’t a lapse. It was a crime. And the nation deserves the truth.”
Days later, Jaishankar presented an amended version at a meeting of the consultative committee of Parliament, where he said the DGMO informed his counterpart in Pakistan about the air strike after it happened, not before.
- Sixteen Opposition parties demanded a special session of Parliament to discuss the Pahalgam terror attack, Operation Sindoor and related international developments. A group of citizens also made the same demand. Soon after, ‘official sources’ ruled out any such debate. The Modi regime has always avoided a threadbare discussion on controversial issues. As pressure mounted, the regime announced the dates for the regular monsoon session 47 days in advance. “Normally, the dates are announced a few days before the start, never 47 days ahead,” Jairam Ramesh pointed out. “It was to dodge our demand for a threadbare discussion,” he said. Why should Modi run away from holding an all-party meeting to discuss India’s foreign policy, Ramesh asked.
- Rahul Gandhi used the phrase ‘Narender surrender’, alleging that Modi had announced the ceasefire under pressure from Trump. Instead of regulars such as Gaurav Bhatia and Sambit Patra, the ruling establishment sent BJP president J.P. Nadda to counter the jibe. The whole system, including the Godi Media, BJP’s social media networks and professional influencers, was mobilised against Rahul. They alleged that he had ‘insulted’ the armed forces. A news channel conducted an ‘opinion poll’ that found his remarks were ‘not in good taste.’
- Rahul Gandhi wrote an article in an English daily alleging industrial-scale rigging in the Maharashtra Assembly elections held last November, and said this was a ‘blueprint’ for similar rigging elsewhere. Apart from the usual central leaders, the BJP also drafted chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and Union minister Nitin Gadkari to fight the fire. Fadnavis gave interviews to media houses defending the Election Commission. The Nirvachan Sadan’s own bold rebuttals were credited to ‘sources’, not the chief election commissioner or the other commissioners. In his response, the leader of the Opposition referred to these ‘unsigned and evasive notes’. It took four days for the present chief election commissioner to speak up, that too at an international platform.
In his article, Rahul made three crucial points:
- The Centre hurriedly amending the 1961 rules to restrict access to CCTV footage of polling stations;
- The abnormal increase in the number of voters in the electoral rolls between the Parliament and Assembly elections in Maharashtra, held months apart; and
- The unusually high turnout after 5pm.
None of these accusations was Rahul’s invention. In November last year, Mahayuti spokesperson Sanjay Raut had mentioned these discrepancies and alleged ‘something fishy’ and a ‘big conspiracy’. A Congress delegation led by Abhishek Manu Singhvi had met the CEC in December to flag the unprecedented rise in the number of voters and inconsistencies in the voter turnout data. The Opposition alliance had alleged that on an average, names of 10,000 genuine voters were removed from the list in each constituency. After the Delhi elections in February, the alliance had alleged that the Maharashtra ‘pattern’ had been successfully replicated against AAP.
This writer has seen the 1971 war with Pakistan, and all the conflicts since, first as chief sub-editor of an English daily in Delhi and then as a correspondent in the news bureau. Each time, the then prime minister emerged stronger. Indira Gandhi had already won a landslide victory in the March 1971 general election, but the Bangladesh war cemented her position as a strong and decisive leader. After Pakistan’s surrender, she received a standing ovation in the Lok Sabha. The NDA, led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, too returned with a considerably improved majority after the Kargil war in spite of the indefensible intelligence failures that had caused considerable losses to the Indian Army. Modi himself emerged as a ‘56 inch’ hero after the Balakot strike in 2019, and the BJP’s tally rose to 303 in the subsequent election, up from 282 in 2014. ‘Modi hai to mumkeen hai’ became the catchword.
A great planner, Modi had this time drawn up an elaborate victory celebration to coincide with his government’s ‘11 years in power’. But suddenly, his friend Donald Trump announced the ceasefire, souring the plan and exposing Modi to public embarrassment. Modi’s programmes and speeches since have been lacklustre and, unlike in 2019, the prime minister is now highly defensive. The old bravado is missing, and somewhere along the way he looks like he is losing his sharp oratory. Modi left it to Nadda to issue the list of his government’s ‘11 year milestones’, which most newspapers treated as a routine handout and dumped in the inside pages. The Opposition did not allow the government's claims to go unchallenged, with the Congress responding with its own list of “stagnated growth rate, rising hunger and unfulfilled promises’ and theTMC doing so too.
P. Raman is a veteran journalist and commentator.
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