Rahul Gandhi loses his seat in Congress party landslide defeat

Party leader's north Indian constituency was bastion of support for his famous family

As India's opposition Congress party went down to a landslide defeat on Thursday, its leader, Rahul Gandhi, was also convincingly beaten in his own parliamentary seat - a north Indian constituency that had sent three of his family members to parliament in the past half-century.

The loss of the family bastion seat of Amethi underscored the dwindling relevance of south Asia's most famous political dynasty in Narendra Modi's "new India", alongside the decline of the pluralistic vision of India that has been synonymous with the Nehru-Gandhi family for the past seven decades.