India’s Top Court Clears Way for Rahul Gandhi’s Return to Parliament

India’s Supreme Court cleared the way on Friday for Rahul Gandhi, the country’s foremost opposition leader, to return to Parliament and run in next spring’s national elections, a contest that will pit Prime Minister Narendra Modi against a coalition featuring a debilitated Congress Party led unofficially by Mr. Gandhi.

The decision reversed a lower court’s ruling that had sentenced Mr. Gandhi to two years in prison and therefore disqualified him from the legislature for a taunting remark he made in 2019 about the name Modi.

It was unclear when Mr. Gandhi — the fourth-generation scion and great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, a founding father of independent India — would be reinstated to Parliament. He was disqualified less than 24 hours after the original conviction.

Until last year, he had been considered an especially ineffectual politician. In recent months, undaunted by his expulsion from Parliament, his side has managed to gather a broad range of parties into an alliance under the acronym INDIA. But they remain very much the underdog.

In his 2019 comments, made on the campaign trail, Mr. Gandhi had cited a short list of infamous fugitives accused of large-scale fraud: Lalit Modi, a cricket impresario; and Nirav Modi, a diamond merchant. Then Mr. Gandhi said — in an obvious slight against the popular prime minister, whom he often accuses of wrongdoing — “Why are all thieves named Modi?”

An unrelated man named Purnesh Modi then filed a complaint to a court in Surat, a city in the prime minister’s home state of Gujarat, arguing that the remarks amounted to a criminal slur against all Modis. A judge convicted Mr. Gandhi in March, and Gujarat’s high court later refused the opposition leader’s appeal attempt after a series of hearings.