Several people were injured on Monday morning after five vehicles travelling in Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's convoy collided with an ambulance on the Purvanchal Expressway in Uttar Pradesh. The Congress leader himself was reported to be safe, and he continued his journey towards Sultanpur after the accident.
The collision took place near the 91-kilometre milestone on the expressway, in the Haliyapur area, roughly 100 kilometres from the state capital Lucknow. According to the police, the vehicles involved were travelling at the rear of the convoy when the pile-up occurred. Those injured included party workers, office-bearers and security personnel who were accompanying the leader.
Visuals from the scene, including CCTV footage, showed the ambulance in the rightmost fast lane of the expressway, with a large number of vehicles bunched up in the adjoining lanes. A Scorpio SUV, its bonnet crumpled from the force of the impact, appeared to have come to a stop in front of the ambulance after the collision. Reports from the spot indicated that no one was seriously injured, though several people received injuries in the crash.
Gandhi had arrived at Lucknow's Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport earlier in the morning, where hundreds of Congress workers and local party leaders had gathered to welcome him. From the airport, his convoy set out for Sultanpur, a town around 135 kilometres away. The accident happened when the convoy was about 35 kilometres short of its destination, under the jurisdiction of the Haliyapur police station.
The purpose of Gandhi's visit to Sultanpur was a court proceeding that has been awaited for years. The Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha was scheduled to appear before a special MP-MLA court in the town, which was expected to pronounce its verdict on Monday in a defamation case dating back to 2018. His physical presence was required for the pronouncement of the judgment.
The case relates to alleged objectionable remarks made by Gandhi about Amit Shah, who was the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party at the time and is now the Union Home Minister. The complaint was filed on August 4, 2018, by BJP leader Vijay Mishra, a former chairman of the Sultanpur District Cooperative Bank. The alleged remarks were made during a campaign rally in Bengaluru ahead of the 2018 Karnataka Assembly elections.
According to Sultanpur Superintendent of Police Vineet Jaiswal, Gandhi was expected to travel by road from Lucknow to Sultanpur and reach the town at around 10 in the morning, in line with his scheduled itinerary. Police had made elaborate security arrangements in and around the court complex in view of the proceedings, with adequate personnel deployed to maintain law and order.
Uttar Pradesh Congress president Aradhana Mishra, who is known as Mona, spoke to reporters about the visit before the accident. She said the party had complete faith in the judiciary and that Gandhi was travelling to Sultanpur only for the court case. She did not speak about the merits of the case, choosing instead to underline the party's respect for the judicial process.
The accident briefly disrupted the convoy's movement on one of Uttar Pradesh's busiest expressways. The Purvanchal Expressway connects Lucknow with the eastern districts of the state, including Sultanpur, and carries heavy traffic through the day. Large political convoys on such roads often involve dozens of vehicles, and Monday's incident has once again drawn attention to the risks involved when a long line of vehicles travels at speed in close formation.
Road safety experts have long pointed out that pile-ups involving convoys are frequently caused by sudden braking in one part of the line, which leaves vehicles behind with little time or space to react. In this case, the presence of an ambulance in the fast lane added to the complexity of the situation, and the exact sequence of events that led to the collision was not immediately clear.
The police had not, by the time reports emerged, announced a detailed account of how the crash began.
What was clear, however, was that the injuries were spread across the convoy rather than concentrated in a single vehicle. Party workers, office-bearers and security personnel were all reported to be among the injured, which suggests that several vehicles in the rear section of the convoy were caught up in the chain collision. The injured were attended to at the spot before the convoy resumed its journey.
The incident also comes at a politically charged moment. The defamation case in Sultanpur is one of several legal proceedings involving senior political leaders, and the verdict, whenever it is delivered, is likely to be watched closely by both the Congress and the BJP. The case has moved through the special MP-MLA court over several years, and Monday's hearing was seen as a significant milestone in its progress.
For the Congress, the visit was also a show of organisational strength in Uttar Pradesh. The large welcome at Lucknow airport and the arrangements in Sultanpur underlined the party's effort to remain visible in a state where it has struggled electorally in recent years. The accident, while not affecting Gandhi himself, cast a shadow over the day's proceedings and raised questions about the safety arrangements for such road journeys.
Security arrangements for leaders of Gandhi's stature typically involve a mix of central and state police personnel, route clearance and a planned convoy formation. Yet accidents of this kind are not unknown, and they often involve the vehicles at the rear of a convoy, where local workers and supporters travel in less controlled conditions than the heavily protected vehicles at the front.
As the day progressed, attention shifted back to the courtroom in Sultanpur, where the verdict in the defamation case was awaited. The complainant's counsel had earlier indicated that Gandhi's presence was necessary for the pronouncement, and the court had previously scheduled the verdict for October 13 before it was taken up on Monday.
The episode serves as a reminder of the everyday risks of road travel, even for the country's most protected political figures. While the political and legal significance of the Sultanpur visit will dominate the headlines, the injuries suffered by workers and security personnel in the convoy are a sobering footnote to a day that began with a journey and ended in a courtroom.
(Reporting based on NDTV and India TV.)