For a decade now, a familiar refrain has echoed across seminars, television studios, universities, and social gatherings—“India needs, and deserves, a strong opposition”.
Many well-meaning members of the intelligentsia have confronted me with this assertion. My usual response: “As a member of the treasury benches, our job is governance. Surely, you cannot expect us to devote our bandwidth to help improve the opposition as well.”
And, yet, today, I feel compelled to do exactly that—not out of hubris after the resounding vote of confidence in Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Bihar elections, but out of sincere concern for the health and credibility of our republic.
Two months ago, in this very space, I critiqued the Congress campaign in Bihar, noting that its scorched-earth strategy would not win public trust. I wrote that such a campaign could only serve as a preemptive excuse to justify failure.
While I am pleased the verdict vindicated the first part of that analysis, I am disappointed the second part has also come true. Instead of introspecting, the Congress is again choosing to blame the system.
The simplicity of the truth makes its theatrics so puerile. If the Congress leadership truly believed that millions of genuine voters were disenfranchised, surely a few thousands of them would have taken to the streets in protest? Yet nothing of the sort happened. Even its brazen calls for violent unrest by Gen-Z Indians, imitating neighbouring countries, fell flat.
Voters across age groups and communities saw through this attempt to shift blame rather than address the party’s own missteps. The Congress’s stubborn refusal to approach the courts for legal redress of its allegations is a dead giveaway. It confirmed what even Congress-sympathetic voices have admitted in the media—that the charges were never meant to withstand scrutiny, but to build a narrative and deflect responsibility for repeated failures. This Congress leadership remains entrenched after nearly a hundred electoral defeats. The party of the 1960s, through the 1990s, bears little resemblance to today’s version, dominated so completely by one family that even unprecedented levels of successive failures do not matter one bit.
But a turning point has now arrived. Congress’s one-track strategy of irrationally blaming Modi, the BJP, the RSS, and now even constitutional bodies for its disconnect with voters is corroding its alliance partners. Many regional parties, that once saw the Congress as a helpful junior collaborator, now view its embrace as political poison ivy—tempting but ultimately severely damaging. Once a party acquires this aura of negativity, the next step is irrelevance.
The teflon coating that once protected the party’s first family will not endure much longer. If the Congress is to avoid yet another split—especially when its national footprint has severely dwindled—it must course-correct. That requires something the party has resisted for years: a candid mea culpa and the courage to embrace internal reform.
It must revisit sober assessments like the A.K. Antony report of 2014. It must take positions in the national interest, even when those are already championed by the Modi government. It must offer pragmatic alternatives in Parliament instead of reflexively opposing everything. It must stop undermining institutions merely to rationalise setbacks. And, most important, it must allow genuine talent to rise instead of sidelining competence for fear of overshadowing its hereditary leaders.
If the Congress can digest these bitter prescriptions, it may yet evolve into the meaningful opposition India deserves. If not, others will take its place. But the murmurs within its ranks—which are growing ever louder—will swell into a storm that forces change whether the leadership likes it or not.
Baijayant ‘Jay’ Panda is National Vice President of the BJP and is an MP in the Lok Sabha.