By Arun Srivastava
Increased aggressiveness and confrontationist attitude of Union home minister Amit Shah —musing police and state machinery, even denying the Supreme Court’s directive to maintain restraint — to curb students’ protests, has caused immense worry in the social and political circles. Apparently, it is being perceived as a sign of the saffron ecosystem losing the narrative battle, its desperation to retrieve the lost ground and boost the morale of BJP cadres, while apprehensions about what PM Modi might be planning next to counter the agitations.
The reconciliatory approach of Modi, making education minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign in the wake of July 20 protest, had previously raised hope that the PM would put the house in order. But he did not. On the contrary, through his silence, PM Modi sent the message that he could not commit wrong. This simply added to the students’ and youths’ anger. A performing and confident leadership relies on legitimacy, clear vision, and measurable results, rather than resorting to repression or coercion. When leaders are effective and secure in their positions, they welcome feedback and handle dissent through dialogue. But these are alien concepts for Narendra Modi and his protégé.
Modi resorting to repressive mechanisms, silencing critics, letting lose reign of terror, using police to silence voice of protest, or micromanagement, or punitive measures are signs of underlying insecurity, structural failure, and lack of genuine peoples’ support. While a true leader earns his strength from peoples’ respect, transparency and competence, a failed leader resorts to ruthless use of power against its own subject. A concerned leader welcomes criticism as data to improve performance, but the laissez-faire leader views dissent as a threat or personal attack. Modi-Shah duo ought to realise that high-performing cultures are built on trust and repression breaks trust.
Rahul intensifying his outreach programme to the people and providing a left-of-centre orientation to Congress over the last four years, has made Modi worried. An insight into his political behaviour would make it explicit that after 2024 Lok Sabha elections, which Modi lost miserably, he has turned aggressive. He has two tasks ahead of him; first to convince the people that he enjoys electoral majority, and second, his authority has not been impaired, he is still the undisputed leader. But, the fact is otherwise. Modi has long known that he was on a weak wicket and would not have become the prime minister for the third term if TDP leader N. Chandrababu Naidu and JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar had not joined NDA and extended support to him. This sense of fragility continues to haunt Modi.
It is to mitigate that electoral vulnerability that Modi has resorted to aggressive electoral politics and alleged manipulation of voter rolls. For him vote chori (vote theft) and SIR were the ultimate paths of salvation. Modi and Shah treat election campaign a 24/7 exercise and maintain a high-pitched presence across state and national elections. Shah transformed the BJP into a data-driven, heavily-resourced machinery focusing on booth-level management, demographic slicing, and page-pramukh (booth coordinator) networks. In 2026, the Modi-Shah leadership faces heightened pushback from a unified opposition INDIA bloc, including demand for electoral roll revisions and the autonomy of the Election Commission. This shifting political dynamics has unnerved Modi-Shah combine. Rahul has increasingly focused public messaging around youth unemployment, paper leaks, institutional checks, and voter integrity, challenging the narrative of the 2014–2024 period.
Shah utilising security and police forces aggressively to suppress protests as a sign of the BJP losing ground and attempting to boost party morale is part of the central argument made by India’s political opposition. High-handed law enforcement actions, as those by the Delhi Police, reveal a government acting out of defensiveness; like the police actions against students protesting examination paper leaks or public agitations at Jantar Mantar as evidence of an “authoritarian police state”. From this viewpoint, deploying rigorous crowd control measures, using pellet guns, barricades, and detentions is a strategy to stifle democratic dissent because Modi-Shah are finding it tough to contain public discontent.
Political engagement and the right to protest are legally protected activities in India, available to all citizens, including political leaders and religious figures. Organising peaceful protests, rallies, and marches is a core democratic right. But intriguingly, the saffron ecosystem views Rahul’s political mobilisations as a definite threat to their legitimacy. It accuses him of resorting to these actions for grabbing power.
If saffron saints and sadhus could enter politics and strive for a ministerial berth, why should Rahul not aspire to come to power and rule? Obviously, the saffron allegation that the Leader of Opposition has been spearheading movement for “coming to power” is tautological bordering on the absurd. Democracy is about challenging power and electorally defeating it in election cycles. After all, that is what Modi did to the previous UPA government helmed by Dr. Manmohan Singh.
A question is making round the social and political circle whether Rahul’s political strategy will help the Congress party gain numerically in the next Lok Sabha elections and come to power. Many think that Rahul may have succeeded in arousing the political consciousness of the people, especially the Dalits and backward through his inclusive political narrative, but they doubt whether this will help Rahul fetch votes. Rahul Gandhi’s strategy combines high-visibility street politics, an aggressive stance on social justice, tightly guarded internal information management, and ideological confrontational approach against BJP.
By shifting from defensive posturing to aggressive street protests, as recent agitations concerning the Election Commission and voter roll revisions, Gandhi has injected significant energy into the grassroots cadre. District-level workers feel the party is actively fighting back rather than remaining passive. By championing a caste census and demanding the removal of the 50% reservation ceiling, Congress is actively attempting to win back numerically dominant, lower-income, and historically marginalized communities (such as OBCs and Dalits) that had shifted to the BJP over the last decade.
The Congress had virtually lost its identity during last thirty years, especially in Hindi heartland, as the cadres got disillusioned with its functioning and leadership. Of late, the process appears to have reversed. The Congress is gaining back the support base. Cadres are the backbone of an election campaign, executing the ground-level strategy required to turn public support into actual votes. They are responsible for the physical mobilization and organization that secures victory on election day. They serve as a two-way communication channel between the party leadership and the electorate.
With a motivated cadre, Rahul could expect Congress to do well during the election, but much depends how far Rahul will succeed in the mission to foil Amit Shah’s electoral manipulations, as he used SIR in earlier elections. The SIR super structure continues to exit notwithstanding the media expose, as the Supreme Court has done precious little to dismantle it. It is not sure that the massive number of voters whose name were deleted from the list would be added back well before the elections. No cosmetic action will help.
The only solution is the SC must fully revoke the SIR, direct the ECI to hold elections on the basis of the previous list and launch SIR exercise, once the current election process is over. There is no denying that CEC Gyanesh Kumar had violated the rules for benefitting the BJP. He had misled the apex court. He eventually confessed that ECI modified Form 6 (voter registration) without authorisation. The Court clarified that it never approved these modifications and pulled up the poll body for falsely projecting judicial endorsement for the changes. The Supreme Court should have made Gyanesh Kumar reveal the name of the person who compelled him to violate him electoral norms practices.
The latest round of aggressiveness of Modi-Shah could be understood in the backdrop of fear that haunts the Gujarati duo that SIR will not fetch the desired result. At the same time, they are compelled to ensure their rule continues. In fact, they are using the aggressiveness as a façade to devise a new mechanism of further manipulating elections. Rahul Gandhi and the INDIA bloc must not merely take the confrontationist mechanism as a simple government action. While Gandhi’s high-profile “street politics” and narrative management has energised the party’s cadre, recent election data and political realities point to deep organisational weaknesses that have yet to be resolved.
Congress faces an uncertain path to power due to a combination of long-standing institutional erosion and its ongoing struggle to counter the dominant, highly disciplined political ecosystem of the ruling BJP. Despite temporary boosts, such as showing improved resilience in the 2024 general elections and formalising its leadership within the opposition INDIA bloc, the party continues to suffer from deep systemic vulnerabilities. Congress is largely dependent on an “electoral leadership” charisma. With the Indian political and social landscape shifting to the right, Rahul must strive to give a definite left-of-centre character to the Congress for any chance at electoral success.
Strategically, Modi and Shah continue to project Congress as a spent force which cannot serve the people, especially the poor and Dalits. They argue that Congress’s structural decay remains unaddressed; as a result, it has continuously lost ground in critical state elections. Amidst this, one positive development that has been taking place is Congress becoming “andolanjeevi” (street-smart protester), shedding the tag of parjeevi (parasite). Rahul pivoting Congress toward aggressive, with highly visible street-level mobilisation and anti-RSS ideological clarity has in fact unnerved the Gujarati duo. (IPA Service)
