Expelling Rahul Gandhi From Parliament, Modi Allies Thwart a Top Rival

NEW DELHI — Rahul Gandhi went to battle against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in elections four years ago waving the banner of India’s multi-sectarian tradition and characterizing Mr. Modi as a dangerous Hindu nationalist who would whittle away the country’s democracy if he remained in power.

A Modi landslide in that 2019 vote all but buried Mr. Gandhi and the storied party his family had led for generations, the Indian National Congress.

On Friday, Mr. Modi’s allies moved to finish the job: Officials disqualified Mr. Gandhi from his seat in Parliament, just a day after a court found him guilty of criminal defamation — over a line at a 2019 campaign speech in which he likened Mr. Modi to a pair of prominent “thieves” with the same last name. The move came before he had any chance to appeal.

The sentence in that trial, two years in prison, happens to be the statutory minimum penalty that renders a sitting member of Parliament ineligible for office. New national elections are scheduled to take place early next year, and whatever luck Mr. Gandhi and his lawyers find in court, the defamation verdict seems likely to keep him and Congress mired in legal defense for years to come.

It was the boldest stroke yet by Mr. Modi’s allies to winnow out potential rivals and move against sources of dissent, in what is being seen broadly as a consolidation of power ahead of next year’s elections.

Mr. Modi is fond of reminding world leaders that India is the biggest democracy on the planet. But his critics accuse him and his Bharatiya Janata Party, known as the B.J.P., of trying to twist the country’s political system into something more akin to an electoral autocracy, with himself as total leader.