CONGRESS leader Mr. Rahul Gandhi is in a terrible tight spot in his political career. Though he might have thought of using it as a high point from which to start attacking the Narendra Modi Government with renewed energy, he is more likely to run into more stumbling blocks than not in the pre-election time when the country will go to polls to give Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi a historic third consecutive victory. In the battle to that point, Mr. Rahul Gandhi is quite likely to be standing on the fringe and making only a minimal contribution to the Opposition cause. For, when the next Lok Sabha election is less than two years away, he may not be able to contest from any seat when he stands disqualified as a Member of Parliament (MP). In that case, Mr. Rahul Gandhi will be a star campaigner for his Congress party and the Opposition all right, but his campaigning will miss the sting he is expected to lend to the effort.

Mr. Rahul Gandhi, thus, has a very narrow bandwidth of options and is very less likely to be effective in the battle of the ballot ahead -- in the legislative as well as parliamentary elections. There is no doubt that the Congress party will kick up much din and dust against Mr. Rahul Gandhi’s arrest and disqualification. Yet, that effort will have only a limited appeal with the political community as well as common voters.

For, even as the Congress party tries to raise hell against the Prime Minister, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), its biggest limitation will come in the form of fact that its top-most leader has been disqualified. The ruling BJP will take the best benefit from the situation when its cadres and leaders unleash an all-out campaign against the Congress leader. Within minutes of disqualification, they -- the BJP leaders -- started citing the action of Mr. Rahul Gandhi to tear into pieces an ordinance that the Manmohan Singh Government was to bring in to counter the very law under which the Congress leader has lost his membership. That time, Mr. Gandhi had stormed into a press conference being addressed by a Union Minister -- Mr. Ajay Maken -- to announce the introduction of the said ordinance. The BJP has also begun telling how Mr. Rahul Gandhi is a victim of an internal party politics by way of which nobody approached a higher court the moment the Surat court’s judgement came. The BJP is interpreting this being part of a conspiracy against Mr. Rahul Gandhi. How does the Congress party face this situation? Of course, its shouting brigade is quite strong and it will raise much noise against its leader’s disqualification. But those efforts, too, are less likely to have a positive impact on the political situation.

For Mr. Rahul Gandhi, the only way out is to change his approach to politics -- from cantankerousness to carefulness and responsibility. If he goes through the rigours of the immediate electoral challenge in a dignified manner, he may be able to look at better future in the next some years. Whether he will be willing to undertake such a journey or not will decide what kind of fate the Congress party will have in 2023 and 2024 elections. His options are limited. But history tells us that great leaders have turned tables in their favour even in worse conditions. Does Mr. Rahul Gandhi have that maturity and genius?