The political impact of Rahul Gandhi's legal woes

Unable to marginalise him politically, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is using the courts to eliminate Congress leader Rahul Gandhi from the political scene. His maximum sentence of two years for defaming everyone with the surname Modi had been upheld by the sessions court in Surat and now by the Gujarat High Court. He has lost his seat in the Lok Sabha and cannot contest an election for the next eight years.

The Congress party will appeal to the Supreme Court to quash his conviction. However, the political consequence may not necessarily be adverse for Rahul Gandhi, the Congress, or indeed the Opposition if the apex Court provides no relief.

Rahul Gandhi's challenge to the present regime would not be over. It may be the best gift the BJP could give the Congress and the Opposition before the 2024 general election. Recall how the picture of Rahul Gandhi addressing a public rally despite a heavy downpour in Mysore on the Bharat Jodo Yatra took social media by storm. Photographs and posters of him behind bars could electrify the people -- invigorating not only Congress workers and supporters but also impacting fence-sitters. The voters know how the case originated, and they will make their own assumptions about who is trying to punish Rahul Gandhi.

Much as the ruling regime might try to argue that his travails are his own doing and that of the judiciary, such claims will not wash. Unfortunately, the public is increasingly sceptical about the legal processes and their outcome. The press conference by four supreme court judges about the state of the apex court in 2018, the behaviour of former Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi in the sexual harassment case against him, his eager acceptance of a Rajya Sabha nomination, the non-judicial rationalisations given for the Ayodhya judgement and the invariable release of criminals with ideological protection in cases of terrorism, rape and communal violence are some important reasons why the public is unlikely to be impressed by the legal process.

If Rahul Gandhi is imprisoned, the most important message to go out will be that the political regime is nervous and that it feels threatened enough by its adversaries to remove them from the competition. The public sympathy will reductively focus on the victim and why he was singled out and sent to jail. The non-partisan and undecided voters are, therefore, likely to sympathise with Rahul Gandhi, who will be seen as a political martyr.

Within the Congress, the leadership dynamics will change if Rahul Gandhi is in jail for two years. The scope for new leadership will emerge in the party. It can open up the leadership field wide for a non-Gandhi family member, or the party may choose to go with his sister Priyanka Gandhi as the new leader. However, Rahul Gandhi's political career will not end though it might pause for the time being. Going to jail is a rite of passage for politicians, and they tend to emerge stronger if the punishment is seen to be unfair. Congress leader in Karnataka, D Shivakumar, was jailed briefly, and yet it was under his leadership as the state Congress president that the party decisively came to power this year.

Rahul Gandhi is not the only Opposition leader being targeted by the BJP. In the run-up to the 2024 general election, the BJP is also trying to hobble other Opposition parties and their leaders as well. The strategy seems to be to break the parties and whisk away the political capital represented by their party flag and symbol along with the deserters. This is done by beguiling away the overambitious and allegedly corrupt politicians in various Opposition parties, offering advantages of power and pelf by allying with it. However, the pressure applied on them through the government's investigative agencies will stick in the public mind.

By vandalising other political parties – encouraging the break-up of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) recently and of the Shiv Sena earlier in Maharashtra – the BJP is doing them a favour. It did the same to the Congress by drawing away an ambitious Jyotiraditya Scindia and his loyalists from the party in Madhya Pradesh. The removal of leadership challengers or faction leaders from the Opposition parties will make it easier for the parent party to select and field candidates in the coming elections. There would be no pressure from the factional leaders to accommodate their loyalists, which invariably leads to suboptimal distribution of tickets by sidelining winnable candidates.

The BJP's desperation will become all the more evident publicly if, as is being speculated, it goes ahead and breaks Opposition parties in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal as well. There is also an expectation that besides Rahul Gandhi, in the coming months, some more leading lights from the Opposition may be targeted for financial malfeasance and even jailed -- especially from the Aam Adami Party in Delhi (which already has two of its leaders in prison) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). The political situation leading up to 2024, therefore, is still unfolding in ways that cannot be predicted. Rahul Gandhi's travails would be just one chapter in that saga.

The general election may seem a foregone conclusion to some. However, they should ask themselves why then is, the BJP recklessly breaking the Opposition parties and facilitating the imprisonment of its adversaries. RJD patriarch Lalu Yadav asked a rhetorical question to those in power "Jahiya tu na rahi to te tohar ka hoi (What will happen to you when you are not in power)?" The BJP leadership should ponder over this question.

The new language of power that it has been shaped in the last ten years is unlikely to change even when the Opposition comes to power. Dissent and political criticism will continue to attract harsh retribution. Today's dispensers of political justice would be at the receiving end of the stick. Those who have given no latitude to the Opposition while in power will receive no concessions either when they are out of power.

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the writer. They do not reflect the views of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper