Self Goal!

Rahul Gandhi’s latest press conference was advertised as a bombshell. It turned out to be a damp squib, the sort of cracker that hisses for a second and dies before you find the matchbox.

He claimed that at four in the morning some mysterious “Nagraj” wakes up, deletes two names from the voter list in thirty-four seconds, and goes back to bed. Sixty-six thousand names, all Dalits, tribals and minorities, are apparently being spirited away by this phantom. The trouble is, the very constituency he cited was won by his own party.

When asked why he doesn’t drag these villains to court, he shrugged: “Protecting democracy isn’t my job; my job is to accuse.” One follower did try his luck in the Madras High Court and came away poorer by a lakh of rupees.

The Election Commission, meanwhile, has produced call logs, IP addresses and FIRs. Rahul prefers slides, slogans and the occasional foreign jaunt. He has turned politics into a travelling stand-up act — without the jokes landing.

Keshto Mukherjee, if alive, would have raised his glass, smiled wryly and said: the boy has energy, a sense of theatre, but no sense of proportion. A leader who refuses affidavits, evidence or the hard slog of legal battle is not defending democracy; he is merely heckling from the gallery.

And so the nation wakes up the morning after, a little amused, a little weary, realising that Rahul’s “bomb” was nothing more than a noisy toy let off in the drawing room.