On May 10, 1993, a lawyer dressed in legal robes went through a sheaf of papers at the dock strategically placed just outside the entrance to the Lok Sabha.
He was there to defend then Supreme Court judge Veeraswami Ramaswami who faced an impeachment motion.
| Are you confident of winning? Absolutely. That is why I have got the ticket. Why? What national issues? What are the other issues? Unemployment, poverty, hunger, starvation, you name it and it is there. I am not saying it, people are saying it. And then these BJP people have the temerity to say that India is shining! What is your party going to do about it? Will the Congress be vindictive if it assumes power? |
The impeachment motion collapsed on the floor of the House and the lawyer, Kapil Sibal, occupied the national limelight with all newspapers in the country prominently reporting his defence of the judge.
Sibal has not looked back since.
The 55-year-old senior Supreme Court advocate has impressive credentials. Educated at Delhi's St Stephen's College and the Harvard Law School in the United States, Sibal rose to become India's additional solicitor general and president of the Supreme Court Bar Association. His legal expertise not only brought him considerable publicity, but also entry into the political arena.
Fed up with the successive cases lodged against him by what he felt was a vindictive National Democratic Alliance government, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Laloo Prasad Yadav hired Sibal to defend him.
Sibal's handling of the cases pleased the RJD chief so much that he spoke highly of him to his party's alliance partner in Bihar, the Congress, which made Sibal a Rajya Sabha member in 1998.
Considering his quicksilver mind and legal acumen, Sibal -- whose elder brother Kanwal served as India's foreign secretary till recently -- was made a Congress spokesman in 1999.
He has been a major weapon in the Congress attacks on the Vajpayee government over various scandals like the UTI scam, the Tehelka expose, and the coffin scam, much to the NDA's discomfiture.
If anyone had any doubt about the party high command's confidence in Sibal, it must have been erased with the ticket for the Lok Sabha election from Chandni Chowk, where he will joust with the BJP's bahu. Smriti Malhotra Irani.
An interview with Chief Correspondent Tara Shankar Sahay.
Photograph: Deshkalyan Chowdhury/AFP/Getty Images | Image: Rahil Shaikh
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