Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification: Time for Congress leaders to come out of their comfort zones

New Delhi: The disqualification of Rahul Gandhi as a Lok Sabha member has given Congress an opportunity to regroup itself and turn the organisation into fighting-fit machinery.  

But over the past several years, the grand old party of Indian politics seems to have lost the steam to take advantage of any such opportunity.  

It has not hit the roads effectively as the main opposition party in the past eight years. Barring Rahul Gandhi’s nationwide Bharat Jodo Yatra, the Congress has not been able to re-establish connect with the people of India.

Most Congress leaders could be seen protesting only on Twitter and other social networking sites rather than on the streets.

Hence, there is a big question mark on its ability to make an issue of Rahul Gandhi’s conviction and disqualification.

At the most, Youth Congress president Srinivas BV along with a handful of his colleagues will be seen jostling with the Delhi police somewhere near the party office.  

The rest is business as usual.

It is imperative for the party to go to the masses and hit the ground to regain its lost ground in the country’s political and electoral landscape. And if it failed to do so, the Congress will not be able to stem the electoral slide that had set in with the humiliating defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Now in the next 8-9 months, six states, starting with Karnataka in April-May, will go to elections and the Congress has a good chance in a few of those. It needs to win a few state elections to get going for 2024.  

For Rahul Gandhi too, the disqualification has come as an opportunity to go back to the masses after his Bharat Jodo Yatra and convince the voters that he could be a credible alternative to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.  

It could be a turning point in his political career like his grandmother and former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

On June 12, 1975, Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha of the Allahabad High Court delivered a historic verdict, convicting her of electoral malpractices and debarring her from holding any elected post under the Representative of Peoples Act.

The verdict is widely believed to have led to the imposition of an Emergency on June 25, 1975.

Indira Gandhi won the 1971 Lok Sabha elections from Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh by defeating Janata Party’s Raj Narain. Narain challenged her election alleging electoral malpractices, claiming that Indira Gandhi's election agent Yashpal Kapoor was a government servant and that she used government officials for personal election-related work.  

Justice Sinha disqualified her from Parliament and imposed a six-year ban on her holding any elected post. While the Emergency was in force, the Supreme Court later overturned her conviction on November 7, 1975.

The verdict changed the course of India’s history. The imposition of the Emergency and Indira Gandhi’s subsequent defeat in the 1977 Lok Sabha elections were the direct results of Justice Sinha’s judgment.  

A year after she was defeated by Raj Narain from Rae Bareli post-Emergency, Indira Gandhi successfully contested the Lok Sabha by-elections from Chikmagalur in 1978.  

It was a turning point in Indira Gandhi’s career and the victory gave her a political rebirth. Two years later, she swept back to power in the 1980 Lok Sabha elections, with the Congress winning 353 seats.

Following the footsteps of her mother-in-law soon after joining politics, Sonia Gandhi contested the 1999 Lok Sabha elections from two seats – Bellary in Karnataka and Amethi in Uttar Pradesh.

She defeated BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj from Bellary and Sanjay Singh from Amethi. Sonia Gandhi, however, chose to represent Amethi and gave up Bellary.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Rahul Gandhi became the third member of the Gandhi family to select a second seat from south India when he contested from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh and Wayanad in Kerala. He was defeated by BJP’s Smriti Irani from Amethi but won by a huge margin from Wayanad.

Will he make a comeback like Indira Gandhi, only time will tell.