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Emergency haunts the Congress party even today, five decades after it was imposed in 1975. It had felled the colossus Indira Gandhi in the 1977 general elections. Congress was in ruins, demoralised and enervated, as the newly formed Janata Party was itching to dance on its political grave. 

One by-election dramatically changed the political scenario within a year, splashing the grim canvas with colours of hope. The sitting member of parliament from Azamgarh Ram Naresh Yadav became the chief minister of Janata Party government in 1978, necessitating a by-election in Uttar Pradesh where the Congress could not win even a single seat in the 1977 parliamentary election.

Indira Gandhi reluctantly fielded her trusted colleague Mohsina Kidwai who won, giving a fresh lease of life to the Congress. That astonishing victory signalled that the people hadn’t written off the Congress after so severely punishing it for Emergency, motivating the dejected Indira Gandhi to contest the Chikmagalur by-election in Karnataka herself. She was back in parliament and the political boxing arena sooner than anybody had anticipated.

By-elections aren’t always irrelevant. They have changed the course of history. Who had imagined V.P. Singh will uproot the Rajiv Gandhi government after leaving the Congress? His stunning victory as the joint-opposition candidate from Allahabad in 1988 by-election scripted that transformation in India’s politics. It was actually the V.P. Singh-led National Front government that created circumstances in which L.K. Advani launched the rath yatra for Ram temple, laying the ground for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s hegemonic control of India’s polity.

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