Supreme Court Issues Notice to Rahul Gandhi on Plea Alleging He Pushed a Pregnant Journalist During the October 12 March

The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued notice to Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi and other respondents on an application alleging that he pushed a pregnant woman journalist inside the court's premises during the opposition's march to the court on October 12. A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi sought their responses after senior advocate Gaurav Bhatia mentioned the matter.

Issuing notice is a procedural step. It asks the other side to answer and does not mean the court has accepted the allegation, which has not yet been tested and to which Gandhi has not yet responded in court.

What the application says

According to the application, which was filed within a petition already pending before the court, Gandhi pushed the journalist towards a gate with enough force that she lost her balance and fell, and she had to break the fall with her hands. It says the push happened openly in a crowded area, in front of security staff and other journalists, even though she asked him to stop, and that it was not simply the jostling of a crowd.

The applicant wants the court to order the immediate registration of an FIR against Gandhi and anyone else involved, and to award the journalist compensation. Bhatia first raised the matter on October 16. He told the bench then that the journalist was about three months pregnant and had to be hospitalised after the incident.

How the incident arose

The alleged incident took place during one of the most visible moments of the opposition's campaign against the Election Commission. On October 12, Gandhi and several other opposition leaders, with their supporters, went to the Supreme Court to file a petition alleging large-scale voter deletions and other irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. The court had already issued notice to Gandhi, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, the Congress party and others on a separate plea objecting to the march itself.

Tuesday's notice is therefore the second time the same event has brought Gandhi before the court, this time over an allegation of physical conduct rather than over the protest as a whole.

The political backdrop

The case adds a personal legal dimension to an increasingly heated fight over the voter rolls. Opposition parties in the INDIA bloc are demanding the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and have planned a rally in Delhi on November 1. Congress general secretary K C Venugopal said on Tuesday that the bloc would not back down from that campaign. The Election Commission has told the Supreme Court that all three revision orders were approved unanimously by the commission, and the main petitions are due to be heard again on November 17.

What happens next

The respondents must now file their responses, after which the bench will decide whether there are grounds to direct police to register a case. It is the second major court development involving Gandhi this week, after a Sultanpur court acquitted him in a 2018 defamation case brought over remarks about Amit Shah.

This is an original summary based on public reporting. See our editorial policy for how we source, write, and correct our stories.