The Politics Of Disqualification

He may have been blindsided by the latest move from the saffron camp, but the congress scion could turn it to his advantage to unite the opposition and build a strong, sustained narrative

- Kaushik Deka

Little could Congress leader Rahul Gandhi have known that the ordinance he tore up so dramatically in September 2013 would come back to bite him 10 years down the line. That ordinance, passed by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, had sought to help lawmakers convicted for criminal offences and sentenced to at least two years in prison avoid immediate disqualification from Parliament or state assemblies. At a press conference, Rahul had overturned his own government’s legislation in public, calling it “nonsense”. Two years later, he moved the Supreme Court seeking a decriminalisation of the act of defamation. He had reason to worry. Till 2014, he had no criminal cases against him, but his election affidavit in 2019 showed six criminal cases against him, mostly related to defamation. His plea was rejected.

Rahul had also, at the 85th plenary of the Congress in Raipur in Chhattisgarh this February, made an emotional pitch saying how he had been homeless since childhood, owning no house except the official bungalows allotted to him and his family.

Fate now seems to have caught up with him in a multitude of ironies. On March 23, a district court in Surat pronounced Rahul guilty of defamation for an election speech he had made in 2019 where he asked, “How come all thieves have the surname Modi?”, and proceeded to name fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi, controversial cricket administrator Lalit Modi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Saying that he could have named others such as Vijay Mallya or Mehul Choksi instead of all Modis, the court sentenced him to two years in prison. The complaint was lodged by BJP MLA, ex-Gujarat minister and lawyer Purnesh Modi on the grounds that Rahul’s remark was a smear against all those who share the Modi surname.