On April 3, Rahul Gandhi, a son, grandson and great-grandson of former Indian prime ministers, showed up in Surat, an industrial city in the Indian state of Gujarat, to appeal his conviction for defamation and the two-year sentence that has resulted in his automatic disqualification from India’s Parliament. Gandhi, the face of the opposition Congress party, was accompanied by his sister and prominent party leaders. There were streetside protests in Surat by Congress supporters, as there have been around the country since March 23 when Gandhi was convicted. 

It was, tweeted India's minister of law and justice, a member of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party, a “childish attempt to bring pressure on the appellate court.” Opponents of the BJP, though, say Gandhi was handed a practically unheard-of maximum sentence for remarks he made while campaigning in 2019 that did not meet the threshold for criminal defamation. They also point to the political expediency of the two-year sentence, the exact period of time required to ensure Gandhi was disqualified from Parliament and potentially from participating in the next general election.

Outrage over what appeared to be political chicanery spread quickly. Several opposition parties united to condemn the expulsion of Gandhi. “I strongly condemn the fascist action,” said Tamil Nadu’s chief minister, M.K. Stalin, of how quickly  the BJP moved to ensure Gandhi's disqualification. “I request all Indian political parties,” he added, “to realize that the action against Rahul Gandhi is an attack on progressive democratic forces and oppose it in unison.”

On April 3, while Gandhi was in Surat, Stalin was hosting leading figures from all of India's major opposition parties as part of a social justice conference he said would help create a united front to fight "bigotry and religious hegemony," a pointed reference to the BJP's Hindu nationalist politics. Academic and political commentator Apoorvanand wrote that the opposition to the BJP was unified because it considered Gandhi's expulsion from Parliament “an audacious signal by the government that it can go to any extent to cripple political forces who challenge it democratically.”