Rahul Gandhi, the previous party leader, was disqualified from serving in the Lok Sabha, and the Congress Party in Shimla, led by Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, staged a “Sankalp Satyagraha” protest there. Rahul Gandhi can be stopped in parliament, but not in public, according to Chief Minister Sukhu, who attacked the union government. 

“People and political parties did not face the situation that has arisen today in the country due to bad and anti-people / policies of the Union government. Rahul Gandhi is the voice of democracy and the party is the biggest political party. You can suppress his voice in the parliament but you can’t suppress him in the people’s court. He does not do politics for MP or for the seat of Prime Minister. Democracy is under threat today and we will have to save it,” said the Chief Minister.

The situation is severe, according to Cabinet Minister Vikramaditya Singh, who claimed that democracy has been “throttled and died” during the demonstration. “The Parliament is the temple of democracy but the opposition is not being allowed to take up the issues and is not able to raise their voice. The situation is critical: democracy has been throttled and killed. For those who are trying to raise the voice of people, cases are being registered against them. We will have to fight this battle, if these kinds of atmospheres continue in the country the bright future of the country is in the dark,” he stated.

Rahul Gandhi was banned as a Lok Sabha member on Friday, a day after a Surat court sentenced him to two years in prison in a defamation case filed against him over his statement about the “Modi surname.” The decision was made in response to his April 2019 comment at a Lok Sabha election rally in Kolar, Karnataka, in which he remarked, “How come all the thieves have Modi as the common surname?” Rahul Gandhi was granted bail with a surety by the court, and the sentence was postponed for 30 days so he could appeal to higher courts. To oppose the decision to disqualify Rahul Gandhi, the Congress party organised the nationwide Sankalap Satyagraha.

At the BJP’s Sankalap Satyagraha, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra turned her guns on the party in power and vowed to keep working for the sake of the populace in opposition to the decision to disqualify her brother, Congressman Rahul Gandhi. “Who thinks that they can silence us by scaring and humiliating us? Listen, we will not stop, I will see to it that the hard-earned money of the public is not being looted and given to few people,” Priyanka Gandhi said in a hard-hitting attack on the ruling party at the Centre. “It was my family (Nehru-Gandhi) who nurtured the democracy of this country with their blood,” she said.